FOOTNOTES:
[22] Vol. iii. pp. 451-2.
CHAPTER V
MESDAMES DE STAËL AND DE REMUSAT
It is a strange human frailty that cannot stand for long the purgatory of seeing the elevation of a great public benefactor. The less competent the critics, the more merciless they are in their declamation and intrigue. They hint at faults, and if this is too ineffective, they invent them. Men in prominent public positions rarely escape the vituperation of the professional scandalmonger. These creatures exist everywhere. Their vanity is only equal to their incompetency in all matters that count. Their capacity consists in knowing the kind of diversion a certain class of people relish, and the more exalted their prey is, and the larger the reputation he may have for living a blameless life, the more persistent their whisperings, significant nods, and winkings become. They know, and they could tell, a thing or two which would paralyse belief. They could show how correct they have been in consistently proclaiming that so and so was a very much overestimated man, and never ought to have been put into such a high position; "and besides, I don't want to say all I know, but his depravity! Well, there, I could, if I would, open some people's eyes, but I don't want to do anybody any harm," and so on. These condescending ulcerous-minded defamers congratulate themselves on their goodness of heart in withholding from the public gaze their nasty imaginary accusations, which are merely the thoughts of a conceited and putrid mind.
Many and many a poor man, without knowing it, is the innocent victim of unfounded accusations, hatched and circulated in that subtle, insinuating way so familiar to the sexless calumniator. The genuine female traducer is an awful scourge, especially if she be political. No male can equal her in refined aggressive cunning. She can circulate a filthy libel by writing a virtuous letter, and never a flaw will appear to trip her into responsibility for it. And her sardonic smile is an inarticulate revelation of all she wishes to convey. It is more than a mere oration. It emits the impression of a bite.
Madame de Staël showed an aptitude for this ignoble aggressiveness towards Napoleon after she had exhausted every form of strategy to allure him into a flirtation with her. She was frequently a sort of magnificent horse-marine who bounced herself into the presence of prominent individuals, thrusting her venomed points on those who had been flattered into listening; at other times she was feline in her methods. Talleyrand and Fouché made use of this latter phase of her character to serve their own ends. She had a talent which was used for mischief, but her vulgarity and egotism were quite deplorable. She would have risked the torments of Hades if she could but have embarked upon a liaison with Napoleon. She plied him with letters well seasoned with passion, but all to no purpose. She came to see him at the Rue Chantereine, and was sent away. She invited him to balls to which he never went. But she had opportunities given her which were used in forcing herself upon his attention. At one of these she held him for two hours, and imagining she had made a great impression, she asked him abruptly, "Who was the most superior woman in antiquity, and who is so at the present day?" Napoleon had had enough of her love-making chatter, so snapped out in his quick practical way, "She who has borne the most children." The lady's discomfiture may be imagined. It was a deadly thrust.
This very same lady, who had tempted the ruler of France without success, made violent love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of Napoleon's at the time. Her letters to him were passionate, and Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to kill her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to. This fussy female intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would give her two million francs she would write anything he wished. She was immediately packed about her business.
Madame de Staël was not an important personage at all, but she had the power of attracting people to her who, like herself, had grievances to be discussed, and we may without doubt conclude that these gatherings were composed of well-selected intriguers whom she had fixed in her feline eye. Her great grievance was the First Consul's, and subsequently the Emperor's, coldness towards her. He estimated her at her true value. He treated her with the courtesy due to a French citizen, but nothing more, and when she misbehaved in his presence, he rebuked her with due consideration for her sex. When she caused people to talk to him of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders as was his habit, and smiled disdainfully; though occasionally he could not resist the temptation of ridiculing her comic pretensions. But this human curiosity had power for mischief.
She was not only an intriguer, but, subsequent to her failure in love-making, she developed a literary tyrannicide. She condescended to patronise the head of the State by causing it to be conveyed to him that her hostility would cease under certain well-defined conditions. When he became the real Governor of France, Napoleon put a stop to religious persecution, and put the churches into use. He re-established religion, and by doing so brought under his influence one hundred million Catholics. This wise policy created strong opposition from a section of the clergy. Madame de Staël and the friends whom she had whipped up, many of them being the principal generals, were mischievously opposed to it, and brought pressure to bear so that he might be induced to establish the Protestant religion. Napoleon ignored them all. He knew he was on the right ground, and that the nation as a whole was with him. France was essentially a Roman Catholic country, and the head of it gave back to her people what was regarded as the true faith. The exile frequently referred to these matters in conversation with one or other of his followers. Napoleon's disdain for Madame de Staël was well merited, and he never saw or heard of her that it did not set his nerves on edge. She was the "death on man" sort of female who persisted in being, either directly or indirectly, his political adviser. Dr. Max Lenz accuses the Emperor of developing a despotism that caused him to drive a woman like Madame de Staël from land to land, "and trampled under foot every manifestation of independence."
Really, the good doctor lays himself open to the charge of not making himself better informed of the doings of this sinister person, who was steeped in treason, and who refused to accept the laws of life with proper submission. It is merely farcical to assume that Madame de Staël was kept well under discipline because of a whimsical despotism on the part of the man who had fixed a settled government on France, and who was kept well informed of the attempts of the Baroness and her anarchist associates to undermine and destroy the Constitution it had cost France and its ruler so much to reconstruct and consolidate. "Let her be judged as a man," said Napoleon, and in truth he was right in deciding in this way, as her whole attitude aped the masculine. He was right, too, in showing how wholly objectionable she had made herself to him. He had been led to adopt a sort of "For God's sake, what does she want?" idea of her during the early years of his rule, though he never at any time showed weakness in his actual dealings with her. He disliked women who asserted themselves as men, and he disliked the amorous offspring of Necker more because he loathed women who threw themselves into the arms of men; she had surfeited him with her persistent attempts at making love to him. In one of her letters to him she says it was evidently an egregious error, an entire misunderstanding of human nature, that the quiet and timid Josephine had bound up her fate with that of a tempestuous temper like his. She and Napoleon seemed born for each other, and it appeared as if nature had only gifted her with so enthusiastic a disposition in order to enable her to admire such a hero as he was. Napoleon in his fury tore this precious letter up and exclaimed, "This manufacturer of sentiments dares to compare herself with Josephine!"
The letters were not answered, though this had no deterrent effect on Madame de Staël. She continued to pour out in profusion adoration. He was "a god who had descended on earth." She addressed him as such, and his callous reception of her madness drove her into despair and vindictiveness which brought salutary punishment to herself. Her weapons of wit and sarcasm availed nothing. He looked upon her as a sort of gifted lunatic that had got the idea of seducing him into her head. She became so mischievous that he bundled her out of France. "As long as I live," said he, "she shall not return." He advised that she should live in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for preference. There she would have full scope for her genius in producing pamphlets. "Oh yes," says the "god who had descended on earth"; "she has talent, much talent, in fact far too much, but it is offensive and revolutionary." This poetess-politician, who said brave things and wrote amazing diatribes against her "god," was in truth one of the most servile creatures on earth. She pleaded to be allowed to come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of retirement, but the great man's faith in his own sound judgment was not to be shaken.
"Her promises are all very fine," he said, "but I know what they mean. Why should she be so anxious to be in the immediate reach of tyranny?"
Like all eccentric women who desire to play the part of man, she made her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire. This woman of genius and folly lacked the wisdom of gauging the taste of Bonaparte, whom she desired to captivate with her sluttish appearance and whirling words.
This man of method and order, who had a keen eye for grace or beauty in its varied phases, was always pronounced in his opinion that women should dress simply but with faultless taste. It improves good looks, and, if need be, it covers up defects; but in any case it is the bounden duty of women to dress with some regard to conventional custom. It gives them much greater influence than they would otherwise have. Most women know the importance of this trick, and do it, and they are amply rewarded for their good sense.
Madame de Staël did quite the opposite. She appeared before the Man of Destiny in a shocking garb, and he regarded it as a piece of impertinence. It stirred up his prejudice openly against her, in spite of his indifferent attempts to conceal it, but her egotism was so gigantic, she actually believed she was making great strides towards curing his callousness towards her. This woman has been used elaborately by anti-Napoleonic writers to prove that he was an inhuman despot and she a high-minded, virtuous Frenchwoman, and a genius in the art of government. They quote her as a great authority. Her knowledge of his evil deeds and mistakes of administration is set forth as being flawless. They bemoan his treatment of this amiable female, and in the midst of their ecstasy of compassion and wrath they hand down to posterity a record of unheard-of woes. There is little doubt Napoleon's remark that "the Neckers were an odd lot, always comforting themselves in mutual admiration," is well merited. The daughter utilised the name of the father with lavish persistence. Her ambition and impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have put the most militant suffragette in our time to the blush.
But suddenly her hysteria subsided, and after a brief repose she switched off the truculent side and sought the pity of the man whose life she had set herself to make one long ache if he did not yield to her arrogant pretensions. She had written in a perpetual scream of his iniquities, and was thrown over by her former associates, who saw clearly enough that no real good could be accomplished by whining about cruelty when stern flawless justice only existed. They recognised that she was a personality, but her antics puzzled them, and well they might. She bewailed her isolation with a throbbing heart, and after committing indiscretions that Robespierre would have sent her head flying for, she was suddenly bereaved of her neglected husband. This event gave Benjamin Constant a better chance, but the Baroness aimed at higher game. She was held in the grip of a delusion that she had it in her power to hypnotise the First Consul and cause him to become her lover. She had an uncontrollable idolatry for this august person, whom she hoped to win over by writing for the consumption of his enemies the many reasons for her aversion to him. Without a doubt the woman was madly in love with the object of her supposed aversion, and was driven to frenzy by his obvious distaste for her.
In 1811 she secretly married a young officer called M. de Rocca, who had fallen desperately in love with her. He was amiable and brilliant; became an officer of Hussars in the French Army; did valiant deeds amongst the hills in Andalusia in 1809; and was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Subsequently he was shot down by guerillas, badly wounded in the thigh, foot, and chest; had a romantic deliverance; was hidden in a chapel by a young lady, and nursed into consciousness and convalescence by loving care, which enabled him to reach Madrid, and ultimately Geneva, where, in the radiance of youthful infatuation, he rode with reckless energy down a risky steep part of the city, so that he might pass the window of the lady, who was more than old enough to be his mother, and in a few months was to be made his wife. A child was born to them in 1812, and in order to save its legitimacy, she acknowledged the marriage to a few, but it was not generally known until after her death that Rocca was her lawful husband. Conscious, and sensitive no doubt, that it was not quite natural for old women to marry young men, she prudently had the event kept secret. The young husband did not only possess tender affection for her, but he combined chivalrous ambitions which made the romance additionally attractive.
Be it remembered that Benjamin Constant was a former lover of Madame de Staël. The young bridegroom, following a natural instinct, had a great dislike to Benjamin, and took an opportunity of really small provocation to challenge him to a duel, which, owing to wiser counsels, was never fought. There does not seem to have been very much to fight a duel about. Constant had a quarrel with his father in which he involved Madame de Staël, and Rocca resented it like a gallant youthful husband, who was at that stage when it is thought desirable to shoot or otherwise kill somebody, in order to show the extent of his devotion to his enchantress. Rocca had hoped to die (so he said) before her, but fate willed that he should linger on and suffer for six months more. Madame de Staël slept peacefully into her last long sleep on July 14, 1817.
Her career was chequered and restless. She had influence, which she used oft-times recklessly, and led less gifted people than herself into committing needless errors. She wrote and spoke with a wit and sarcasm which charmed all but those at whom it was directed. Her bitter rebuffs and severe trials were mainly of her own making. For the most part she wrote with superficial feeling and without real soul. During the Napoleonic regime, time was a creeping horror to her, but she found pleasure in the thought that it was a torture to her suffering heart. George Eliot knew and used her extraordinary power; Madame de Staël wasted hers. Nevertheless she had many friends who loved her society. Wellington was brought under her influence. Byron, who shrank from her at first, says, "She was the best creature in the world." She had been at some pains to try to bring Lord and Lady Byron together. She was capable of impressing people with her charm, but magnetic influence she had none when living, and has left none behind.
Rocca exclaimed, when he heard that she had passed to the shadows, "What crown could replace that which I have lost!" And the distracted Benjamin Constant, filled with remorse, reproached himself for some undefined suffering he had caused her, and did penance all night through in the death-chamber of his divine Juliet.
This crazy woman seems to have been capricious in everything. She made and broke liaisons with amazing rapidity while undergoing a compulsory sojourn at Coppet. She formed there an attachment for the son of a person named M. Baranti, which very nearly cheated Rocca from becoming her husband, and the faithless Benjamin Constant from being, erroneously perhaps, associated with her name as the author of the manuscript of St. Helen, and she the notoriety of writing "Ten Years of Exile," which was published after her death.
The youthful Baranti found no scope for his talents at Coppet, and being offered an inducement to go to the metropolis so that he might have larger opportunities of advancement, he abandoned the famous authoress, and she, in loving despair, was seized with the impulse to immortalise his severance by attempting suicide, and thereby ending her passion for liaisons, virulence, and fame. The attempt, presumably feeble, left her long years of mischievous mania for attack on the supposed author of all her woes. She readily found amongst his enemies (and thus the enemies of France) those who yearned with her in the hope she freely and openly expressed that her native land should suffer defeats, and in this her desire was fully acquiesced in by the combination of hysterical and purblind Kings, aided by a coterie of irreconcilables, who welcomed the destruction of their fatherland in order that the man who had made it the glory and the envy of the world should be driven from it. Many of these creatures were members of the same Senate who, a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent address couched in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the hold his personality had on the national life. The following is what they say, and what they ask him to do:—"You have brought us out of the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of the present. Great man, complete your work, and make it as immortal as your glory!"
The authors of this whining appeal are worthy to be associated with the traitorous daughter of Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance to Louis XVI., and of those apoplectic monarchs who sought her guilty and inflammatory aid.
Then we come to another female celebrity, though less notable than Madame de Staël, who is regarded by the traducers of Napoleon as a historian because she wrote in her memoirs that which they wished the world to think of him, and because they flattered themselves that it exculpated them from the charge of injustice and mere hatred. Madame de Staël's book, "Considérations sur la Révolution Française," made its appearance. Its violent characteristics inflamed Charles de Remusat to urge his mother to enter into competition with this work, the result being the production of Madame de Remusat's memoirs, edited by her grandson, M. Paul de Remusat. Charles (her son) had reproached her for having destroyed memoirs she had written previously,[23] but lurking in her mind was the thought of all the favours she and her family had received, and her correspondence, teeming with adulation for the man whom she was now induced to declaim against. The knowledge that she was about to expose her perfidy "worried" her, and she wrote to Charles thus:—"If it should happen that some day my son were to publish all this, what would people think of me?" and the son, obviously influenced by the mother's fears, delayed until the fall of the Second Empire the publication of one of the most unreliable and barefaced calumnies ever produced against a great benefactor.
In her memoirs she says that she and her husband excited general envy by the high position the First Consul had given them. She was first Lady in Waiting, and subsequently Lady of the Household, her husband being "attached to Napoleon's household." She says that she was witty and of a refined mind, and though she was less "good-looking" than her companions, she had the advantage of being able to "charm his mind," and she was almost the only woman with whom he condescended to converse. She relates residing in the camp at Boulogne "and having breakfast and dinner daily with Bonaparte." In the evenings they used to "discuss philosophy, literature, and art, or listen to the First Consul relating about the years of his youth and early achievements."
No doubt the young Madame de Remusat became assured in the same way as Madame de Staël that she would one day be raised to heights of glory unequalled in history, and the disappointment embittered her. She admits that she "suffered on account of blighted hopes and deceived affections and the failure of her calculations." Moreover, Josephine had an eye on the lady whose husband in evil times sought her influence with Napoleon to stretch out a helping hand and save them from the poverty by which they were beset. Napoleon's big heart spontaneously responded to the appeal of his fascinating spouse, the result being that favours were heaped upon M. de Remusat and his wife from time to time, and Josephine's goodness was repaid by seeing Madame in feline fashion purring at her Imperial master's affections, and on the authority of Madame de Remusat she "becomes cold and jealous." Finding that Napoleon did not appreciate her love-making, she, like Madame de Staël under similar circumstances, took to intriguing, which got her quickly into disgrace. She is anxious to make her fall as light as possible in the public eye, so relates that he told her that "his desire was to make her a great lady, but he could not be expected to do this unless she showed devotion." But in spite of the wife's defection, as is always Napoleon's way, he does not visit her sins on the husband, but raises him to the important posts of Grand Master of the Robes, High Chamberlain, and then Superintendent of Theatres, and in addition gave him large sums to keep up his status, and notwithstanding Josephine's cause for "cold jealousy," Madame de Remusat was generously kept in her service after Marie Louise had become Empress. M. de Remusat remained in the Emperor's service until the fall of the Empire, and then went over to Louis XVIII. Both of these sycophants were content to accept the favours of the Imperial couple and eat their bread and cringe at their feet while they plotted with the plotters for the Emperor's downfall.
Unhappily for the veracity and probity of Madame Remusat as a history writer, her letters containing notes jotted down day by day as they occurred have been published, and the memoirs put side by side with these throbbings of the heart reveal an incomparable baseness that makes one wonder at the reckless, blind partisanship which induced her descendants to give the memoirs to an intelligent public.
In the memoirs she says:—"Nothing is so base as his soul; it is closed against all generous impulses, and possesses no true grandeur. I noticed that he always failed to understand and to admire a noble action;" and again she goes on to say that "In war he foresaw the means of calling away our attention from the reflections which, sooner or later, his government could not fail to suggest to us, and he reserved it in order to dazzle, or at least to enforce silence on us. Bonaparte felt that he would be infallibly lost the day when his enforced inactivity enabled us to think both of him and of ourselves." "What a relief whenever the Emperor went away! His absence always seemed to bring solace. People breathed more freely."
Now this would have been all very well. It was the stereotyped phraseology of Napoleon's avowed enemies. He knew it, and viewed it with contempt and derision, and until Madame de Remusat and her snuffling, cringing husband became swollen with over-indulgence and smitten with wounded pride, they regarded language such as now appears in her memoirs as mere froth. She practically says that she held the same views in 1818 as she did from 1802 to 1808, but when she wrote this she no doubt relied on her correspondence being kept snugly private or destroyed; but it has been published, and here are some amazing extracts from it:—
"I often think, my dear, of that Empire, the territory of which extends to Antwerp! Consider what a man he must be who can rule it single-handed, and what few instances history offers like him!"[24] "Whilst he creates, so to speak, new nations in his progress, people must be struck, from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably prosperous state of France. Her Navy, formed in two years, after a ruinous revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after so long, excited the scoffs of a shortsighted enemy."
"When again I reflect on the peace we enjoy, our wise and moderate liberty, which is quite sufficient for me, the glory my country is covered with, the pomp and even the magnificence surrounding us, and in which I delight, because it is proof that success has crowned our efforts; when, in short, I consider that all this prosperity is the work of one man, I am filled with admiration and gratitude."[25]
"What I write here, my dear, is, of course, strictly between ourselves, for many people would be anxious to ascribe to these feelings some other cause than that which really inspires them; besides, it seems to me that we are less eager to express the praises that come from the heart than those that proceed from the mind."[26]
"Thank goodness, I am at last happy and contented!! What a pleasure it is to see the Emperor again, and how much that pleasure will be felt here! This splendid campaign, this glorious peace, this prompt return, all is really marvellous."[27]
"Like woman, the French are rather impatient and exacting; it is true that the Emperor has spoilt us in the campaign; indeed, no lover was ever more anxious to gratify the wishes of his mistress than His Majesty to meet our desires. You demand a prompt march? Very well, the army that was at Boulogne will find itself, three weeks later, in Germany. You ask for the capture of a town? Here is the surrender of Ulm. You are not satisfied!! You are craving for more victories? Here they are: Here is Vienna which you wanted, and also a pitched battle, in order that no kind of success may be wanting. Add to these a whole series of noble and generous deeds, of words full of grandeur and kindness, and always to the purpose, so much so that our hearts share also that glory, and can join it to all the national pride it arouses in us."[28]
"I used to cry bitterly at that time, for I felt so affected that, had I met the Emperor at the moment, I should, I believe, have thrown my arms round his neck, although I should, afterwards, have been compelled to fall on my knees and ask pardon for my conduct."[29]
So overcome with boundless admiration is she that her soul yearns for the gift of being able to do him full justice by writing a history, a panegyric, a book, in fact, that would show him to be immeasurably above all men living or dead. She fears that people cannot see his nobility and greatness as she does. She is bewildered and acclaims him a god. Here is another outburst of passionate devotion:—
"That undaunted courage, carried even to rashness, and which was always crowned with success, that calm assurance in the midst of danger, with that wise foresight and that prompt resolution, arouse always new feelings of admiration which it seems can never be surpassed."[30]
It will be seen her letters shape well for the fulfilment of the great ambition of her life, i.e., to picture him as he was. The writing is good, the description picturesque, and I believe the impartial mind will also regard it as accurate. She believes "that even persons who are hardest to please must be compelled to admit that he is a most amiable sovereign." She is smitten with the feeling of gratitude, and says it is so sweet that she really regards it as another favour. She wishes her husband could "often secure some of those comforting smiles from the master," and tells him he is "no fool to be fond of those smiles," and promises to congratulate him if he secures some.
She asks God to watch over him (such will always be her prayer) when he is fighting and conquering. Her heart is grieved when he is at a great distance from them. She eulogises his great qualities to her son, and advises him "to study all that she was able to tell him of the Emperor, and write about it when he grew up," and the boy exclaimed, "Mother, what you have told me sounds like one of Plutarch's lives!"
But there comes a time when Napoleon sees that the price he has to pay for adulation is too high, for, like most over-pampered people, Madame de Remusat seems to have got the idea of equality badly into her head. She became waspish, exacting, claiming more than her share of emoluments, seeking for attentions which her "amiable sovereign" saw in the fitness of things it would be folly to bestow. She mistook wholesome justice for tyranny, defied discipline, and not only connived at treason, but prayed for the extinction of him against whom it was directed. Disaster overtook him, he fell, and in her delirium of malice and joy she bethought it an opportune moment to write what are known as her memoirs, refuting therein all her former eulogies and opinions so vividly told in the "Letters of Madame de Remusat." Now that adversity so terrible overshadows the matchless hero of the letters, she throws every scruple aside, and warms to her task in writing unstinted, gross, and manifest libels. Contrast with the "letters" these quotations from the memoirs. She avows that "nothing is so base as his soul. It is closed against all generous impulses; he never could admire a noble action." "He possesses an innate depravity of nature, and has a special taste for evil." "His absence brought solace, and made people breathe freely." "He is devoid of every kind of personal courage, and generous impulses are foreign to him." "He put a feeling of restraint into everybody that approached him." "He was feared everywhere." "He delighted to excite fear." "He did not like to make people comfortable." "He was afraid of the least familiarity." This latter grievance, combined of course with the rest, is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that the Lady in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been deservedly snubbed by His Imperial Majesty. It is perhaps necessary to pause here and remind the reader that on the authority of her son, and subsequently of her grandson, these memoirs were written entirely "without malice," and the sole object of writing them at all was that "the truth should be told."
Very well then. Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs, because in the former she over and over again declares that "his comely manners were irresistible"; but in the memoirs with audacious bitterness she affirms "not only is he ill-mannered but brutal."
Such effrontery is beyond criticism. She finds it "impossible to depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the King's return," and describes the hero of her letters as a ruthless destroyer of all worth, and being brought so low, she is straitened by the demands of "truth" and "grows quite disheartened."
It will be observed that it is always truth which is the abiding motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs. She avows it is "truth" she writes. "The love of truth," says the editor in his preface, "gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two years." That is, it took her more than two years to write the "truths" contained in the memoirs disavowing the "truths" so vehemently given in the letters; the former book pregnant with the bitterness of a writer without heart and principle, and with political and personal motives running through its pages like a canker, while the latter, radiant in luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive justice.
The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely drawn to you by favours conferred upon them." He had many examples of this truth, but none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her husband were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and the memory of all the favours that were showered upon them by the man she declares she loved should have kept them from hate and disloyalty, and forbidden the writing of such unworthy vituperations against him.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Madame de Remusat burnt her original memoirs during the Hundred Days, doubtless because she had in her mind the probability that Napoleon might firmly establish himself on the throne, and the discovery of anti-Napoleon MSS. might have acted seriously against herself and family being appointed to important positions. Moreover, the greater danger of getting herself into trouble was constantly in her mind.
[24] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 195.
[25] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p, 196.
[26] Ibid., vol. i. p. 160.
[27] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 2.
[28] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 190.
[29] Ibid., vol. i. p. 393.
[30] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. ii. p. 45.
CHAPTER VI
JOSEPHINE
One of the phenomena of human affairs is the part destined for Josephine, daughter of M. Joseph Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie, sugar-planter at Martinique, and friend of the Marquis de Beauharnais, whose son Alexandre was fated to marry her when she was but sixteen years of age. The marriage took place on December 13, 1779, at Noisy-le-Grand. The pompous young bridegroom speaks of his young bride in appreciative terms in a letter to his father, and in order that his parent may not be disappointed as to her beauty, he explains that in this respect she may not be up to his expectations. He regards the pleasure of being with her as very sweet, and forms the resolution of putting her through a course of education, as this had been grievously neglected.
The father of Alexandre is said to have been charmed with the sweetness of Josephine's character, but then he was not her husband, and it soon became apparent that the union was ill-assorted, and so it came to pass that marital relations were entirely broken off after the birth of Hortense, subsequently dressmaker's apprentice, Queen of Holland, and mother of Napoleon III. Alexandre had gone to Martinique, and it was there the news of his daughter's birth came to him. He knew before leaving France that his wife was enceinte, and expressed his pleasure to her. The Marquis Beauharnais had assured his friend, Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, that his "son was worthy of being his son-in-law, and that Nature had endowed him with fine and noble qualities." These virtues seem to have been dissolved with remarkable rapidity after his marriage, as it was well known before his departure on the voyage to Martinique that he had been diligently unfaithful to the poor "uneducated" little Creole girl who really thought she loved him. From all accounts, and I have read many, Alexandre Beauharnais was an ill-conditioned cruel prig. This excellent son with "fine and noble qualities" had not been long at Martinique before he associated himself with a lady of questionable virtue, who was much older than he. This person's dislike to Josephine caused her to pour into his willing ears and receptive mind scandalous stories of his childwife's love intrigues before she left her native island. This gave Alexandre a fine opportunity of writing a letter to her, disclaiming the paternity of Hortense, and accusing her of intrigues with "an officer in the Martinique regiment, and another man who sailed in a ship called the Cæsar." He declares he knows the contents of her letters to her lovers, and "swears by the Heaven which enlightens him that the child is another's, and that strange blood flows in its veins," and "it shall never know his shame"; and so the virtuous Alexandre goes rambling on, until he comes to the slashing finish in the good old style that persons similarly situated adopt to those whom they have grievously injured. He soars between elegant politeness and old-time aristocratic ferocity: "Goodbye, madam, this is the last letter you will receive from your desperate and unhappy husband." Then comes the inevitable postscript, with an avenging bite embodying the spirit of murder. He is to be in France soon if his health does not break down under the load she has cast upon him. He warns her to be out of the house on his arrival, because, if she is not, "she will find in him a tyrant." The whole letter is indicative of a low-down unworthy scamp, a mere collection of transparent verbiage, intended as a means of ridding himself of a woman he had nothing in common with, and a cover to his own unfaithfulness.
But whatever may be the interpretation of his motives, on his coming back to Paris he kept his word. Conjugal relations were not renewed. His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine was receiving at the hands of this pompous libertine, and he assures her that of "the two, she is not the one to be most pitied."
M. Masson declares that there was never a reconciliation, and that they lived apart, but met in society, and spoke to one another, mainly about their children's education. Josephine caused him to withdraw before her lawyer the gross and unfounded charges he had made against her and to agree to a satisfactory allowance.
Alexandre, finding soldiering distasteful, embarked upon a political career as an aristocrat Liberal. His rise to position was swift, and after the death of Mirabeau he followed him as President of the Assembly. Before his fall came, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Rhine, and at the head of sixty thousand men failed to relieve Mayence and resigned his command.
His Liberal pretensions did not prevent him being included amongst the proscribed. He was made captive, accused of attempting to escape, condemned to death and guillotined. Josephine's device of reassuring the Revolutionists of her conversion to Republicanism by apprenticing Hortense to a dressmaker and Eugene to a carpenter did not avail. She was suspected and sent to Les Carmes, where frequent conversations took place between her philosophic and abandoned husband and herself, mainly concerning their children's education, and had not the reaction against the regime of blood brought about the fall of Robespierre, she would assuredly have shared the fate of Alexandre; and had the cry of "A bas le tyrant" been heard a few days earlier, Beauharnais would have escaped too, and cheated Josephine of becoming Empress of the French and Queen of Italy. As it was, some of the very same people who but a short time before had harangued the mob to "Behold the friend of the people, the great defender of liberty," switched their murderous vengeance on to their late idol, and ere many hours the widow Beauharnais was set free. The thought of the appalling end and the brevity of time that seemed left to her impressed Josephine with all its ghastly horror. She had shrieked and wept herself into a deathlike illness. The doctor predicted that she could not survive more than a week, and for this reason she escaped being brought before the Tribunal.
A wondrous Providence this, which, with frantic speed, broke the power of a hideous monster, and thereby saved the woman who was to enter upon a new era, and to be borne swiftly on to share the glory of an unequalled Empire.
M. Masson's theory is that Josephine's womanly grief had much to do with awakening the sentiment of Paris, and breaking the Reign of Terror; and, indeed, there is some reason in this view, for tears are not only useful as an indication of sorrow, suffering, or conquest, but an effective means of gaining sympathy. Josephine was an adept at trying the efficacy of weeping, and if M. Masson has gauged the influence of melting the heart of the spirit of massacre aright, then Josephine was gifted with, and made the instrument of, a divine instinct that should claim attention and reverence for all time, even though her subsequent misdeeds occasionally incline us to avert the eye.
But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not granted. Then looking at the statue of Liberty, she exclaimed with fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What things are done in thy name!" and these throbbing magical words reverberated through France with wonderful effect. The guilty populace, shuddering with superstitious awe at the revolting horrors committed in the name of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, flashed a thought on the scaffold of the stainless victim, then on the loathsome prisons that were filled with suspects, rich and poor, all over France. Then, in time, the dooming to death of some of the prominent polecats who committed murder in the name of liberty and fraternity brought Robespierreism to an end. Robespierre himself was cursed on the scaffold by a woman who sent him to "hell with the curses of all wives and mothers," and Samson did the rest. And it may be logically assumed that the parting words of Jeanne-Marie Philipon at the foot of the scaffold inoculated the public mind, not only with the horrors that were being committed in the name of Liberty, but what things were cantishly being said in its name. I like to think of the stainless lady's inspired phrase rather than Josephine's tears as being in some degree responsible for the end of the Reign of Terror.
After her release, Josephine's shattered health was a cause of anxiety, but this was soon re-established, and she quickly put her emotions aside and plunged into gaiety with an alacrity that makes one wonder whether she had more than spasmodic regret at the awful doom that had come to her husband, who left a somewhat penitent letter behind, wherein he speaks of his brotherly affection for her, bids her "goodbye," exhorts her "to be the consoler of those whom she knows he loves," and "by her care to prolong his life in their hearts." "Goodbye," says he; "for the last time in my life I press you and my children to my breast."
These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress the widow with any apparent interest. The picture recorded of their tragic married life is not sweet. Neither lived up to the great essentials which assure happiness.
Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering round rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in Les Carmes they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General Hoche, were too familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count with that of a young lady suspect. The truth of such accusations seems highly improbable, and they may well be regarded as malicious slander. It is not unlikely that Josephine was on friendly terms with the General before they met in Les Carmes, but that it was more than friendship is a mere hypothesis. Her relation with that unspeakable libertine Barras was especially unfortunate. No doubt she was driven to extremities after her release. Her fate was as hard as it is possible to conceive. She was without the proper means of sustenance for herself and her family, and appears to have lost no time in really becoming the chosen friend of a creature who took advantage of her and then betrayed her to the world. It is he who tells in his memoirs the sad and sickening story of his connection with Josephine, and gloats over the opportunity it gives him of repeating conversations he had with General Hoche as to her love entanglements. He declares that she was "the patient mistress of Hoche in the sight of the whole world."
The editor of the memoirs to some extent tones down the brutal statements of the author. But a man who publicly exposes the relations he has had with a fascinating woman who gives herself to him may not be readily believed when he deliberately involves his own friends in the liaisons. There is no question of what his part was in the degradation of Josephine, but the luxury of dragging other names into the moral quagmire, in order, it may be, to justify his own dealings and to further debase her, could only be undertaken by a person soaked with the venom of indecency, and, in this case, had no other object than that of gratifying his malice against her husband. His assumption of moral superiority is quite entertaining when he, the seducer and corrupter, speaks of the unfortunate woman's "libertinism," and calls her in his bitterness "a licentious Creole."
This representative of the Republic one and indivisible, embodying Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of the eighteenth century, will forever disgrace the judgment and moral condition of the France which knew Charlemagne.
"Citizen" Barras repudiates the story of Eugene asking the Commander-in-Chief for his beheaded father's sword. He claims that Napoleon himself invented the story. But it is highly improbable that Napoleon would risk at the beginning of his career having his veracity doubted. In itself, the incident is a small matter. The only real interest attached to it is the touching pathos of the small boy asking for and receiving the sword, which, of course, gave his mother the opportunity of calling to thank the General for his goodness, and in this way it has historic importance, as Napoleon and Josephine were married four months after, i.e., March 9, 1796, her age being thirty-two and his twenty-five.
The quibble is that of a small man searching in every pond for mud to throw at his master's memory. Napoleon gave the facts to Barry O'Meara at St. Helena, and they also appear in the "Memorial de St. Helena." Had the introduction of these two remarkable people not come about in this way, it would have been brought about in some other. But, whether the story has any interest further than the writer has stated or not, it is safer to believe Napoleon than Barras, who boasted after the success of Napoleon in Italy that it was he who had perceived in him a genius and urged the Directory to appoint him Commander-in-Chief. Carnot is indignant at this impudent falsehood, and declares that it was he and not Barras who nominated and urged the appointment of Bonaparte. Certainly Carnot's story is the accepted one. It matters little who the selected spokesman of the inspiration was. France needed a man, and he was found.
On the eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife and strenuous responsibility, this young missionary, representing the solacing new doctrine of symbolic brotherhood, neither shirks nor forgets the responsibilities of his instructions to lay Italy at his feet.
Nor does he for a moment forget his wedded obligations. He is in love, nay, desperately in love. The image of Josephine is constantly soaring around him, and he pours forth ebullitions of frantic devotion at the cannon's mouth, in the Canton, anywhere, and everywhere. He is as rich in phrase as he is in courage and resource. He finds time to scrawl a few burning words of passion which indicate that his soul is at once aflame with thoughts of her and the grim military task he has undertaken.
He leads to battle flashing with the spirit of assured victory and inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is the chosen force which is to regenerate misgoverned nationalities. Order out of chaos; moderation in the hour of victory; no interference with any one's religious belief; stern discipline—these were some of the behests of this young Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns were amazing an astonished world and causing significant apprehension in the minds of the Directory, who decided to check the swift process of ascendancy by giving instructions that he was to give over the command of Lombardy to General Kellerman, and go south to commence raiding other parts of Italy, including Rome and Naples.
To this he promptly sends a vigorous though respectful reply, which is intended to convey that they are to have done with such impractical foolery. It is a world-shaking fight he has on hand. The honour and military glory of France are at stake. It is not for mere theoretic upholders of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to meddle with such things. He says to them, "Kellerman is an excellent General, and could lead an army as well as I," but then he goes on to plead the superiority of his army, always modestly leaving himself outside the praise he takes care to bestow on others, and adds with fervour, "The command must remain in the hands of one man." "I believe," says he, "that one bad General is better than two good ones." "The art of war, like the art of government, is a matter of careful handling." Then with delicious frankness he flashes out: "I cannot allow myself to have my feet entangled." "A free hand or resignation." That is his ultimatum. This thunderbolt of bewildering audacity sent a flutter through the sanctuary of Fraternity, and in hot haste a message of confidence, coupled with an order that he shall be left in supreme control, was dispatched by a vigilant energetic courier. The Directory were made to see that a great power had arisen which would hold dominion over them.
And yet this young and terrible conqueror, who judiciously dominated every will in the process of his achievements, he who defiantly told his masters that he would not suffer his "feet to be entangled" by their amateurish absurdities, was entangled for a time by a rapturous infatuation and allowed a giddy woman with seductive habits and a silken voice to cajole, dominate, ridicule, and ignore him. His imploring theatrical appeals to her to come to him are piteously pathetic. The rational parts of his letters are without example in neat concise phrase, and portray a man possessed of great human virtues. It is when the love-storm attacks him that he flies into extravagances, such as when he writes that "she has more than robbed him of his soul," and that "she is devouring his blood." He writes to his brother Joseph that he loves her to madness, and to Carnot even he does the same thing. Perhaps the most extravagant outburst of all is when he begs that she is to let him see some of her faults, and to be less kind, gracious, and beautiful. "Your tears drive away my reason and scorch my blood." "You set my poor heart ablaze." He complains of her letters being "cold as friendship," and adds, "But oh! how I am infatuated."
Josephine has never been addressed in such consuming language before. She is flattered, and her little head becomes swollen with the idea of greatness. The ridiculous endearments amuse her. She must not allow such opportunities of creating envy to pass, so she shows the letters as they come along to her most intimate friends, amongst whom Barras still continues high on the list, and with an air of dizzy pride she playfully says Bonaparte is "very droll." And really, Josephine was right. Some of his letters are "droll," but they are genuine, and this highly honoured woman, launched into prominence and position, and reaping the laurels of his work disgraced her womanhood by showing his letters, and doubly disgraced herself by ridiculing them.
It was not until Murat, Junot, and Joseph Bonaparte were sent by Napoleon to Paris from the seat of war with important dispatches, and also with letters to her, that it dawned upon her that she had carried her unwillingness to join her husband far enough. Doubtless the gallant commissioners had given her a hint that further refusal meant inevitable reprisals. It is quite feasible that the rollicking Junot, who was always prepared to give his soul for Bonaparte, was frank enough to intimate that there was a risk of driving her husband into the arms of some covetous female, many of whom were angling in the hope of capturing the brilliant and rising General, and that already he was showing signs of jealousy and suspicion of her good faith.
News of fresh victories was coming in, fêtes were held in honour of them, crowds of people congregated, and at the sight of her leaning on the arm of Junot after leaving the Luxembourg they shout, "Long live General Bonaparte! Long live Citizeness Bonaparte!" She is enthralled by the adulation which reflected glory showers upon her. Her spirit rebels against leaving all its pleasures and pomps. But she has exhausted every canon of truth in excuses, even that of being pregnant, and finds herself inevitably driven to abandon the seat of joy and easy morals and set off for Milan with her dog "Fortune" and Eugene, her son. Tears flow copiously at the thought of her wrongs, but these are dried up with the compensating opportunity of commencing a flirtation with Murat, who is soon to become the husband of Caroline Bonaparte.
The popular opinion was that it was Junot who was the object of her designs, but the future Duchess d'Abrantès scornfully repudiates this, and declares that Junot's devotion to his beloved General forbade him reciprocating his wife's indiscretion, so he made love to Louise Compoint, Josephine's waiting-maid, instead, the result being that Louise was requested to leave the service of the offended Josephine.
On arrival at Milan, Napoleon was absent, so the honour of receiving her was deputed to the Milanese Due de Serbelloni, who took her in regal style to stay at his palace. On Napoleon meeting his wife for the first time since their marriage his joy was unbounded. Marmont, who betrayed him and France in later days, says that "at that time he lived only for his wife, and never had purer, truer, or more exclusive love taken possession of the heart of a man, and that a man of so superior an order."
Napoleon had still much work to do, and many hard battles to fight, so that they were frequently separated during the remaining months before he had freed Italy and beaten the Austrians. On no occasion when he was absent from her did he neglect sending letters on fire with the assurance of unabated love, but they frequently indicate not only a conviction of her indifference, but a suspicion that it is more, which is promptly nullified by further explosions such as "kisses as burning as my heart and as pure as you." Poor Napoleon! he is soon to be disillusioned. She is the same old Josephine in Italy as she was in Paris. He pleads with her to send him letters, for she must "know how dear they are to him." "I do not live," he tells her, "when I am far from you." "My life's happiness is in the society of my sweet Josephine." Again he writes, "A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul, as chaste as yourself! I have just summoned the courier; he tells me that he crossed over to your house, and that you told him you had no commands. Fie! Naughty, undutiful, cruel, tyrannous, jolly little monster. You laugh at my threats, at my infatuation; ah! you well know that if I could shut you up in my heart I would put you in prison there!" This playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender quotation does not emanate from the heart of a monster, but from an unequalled lovesick soul confiding the innermost secrets of his mind to an inglorious helpmate, whose follies during the first years of their married life were a cruel humiliation to him.
She courted ruin with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue. She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving and devoted wife during the early years of her second marriage.
On her arrival at Milan from Paris she had presented to her many army officers, amongst whom was a young Hussar, the friend and assistant General of Leclerc, who became the husband of Paulette, the giddy little schoolgirl sister of Napoleon. Josephine, at this period of her history was famous for her aversion to chastity, so that it is not altogether inexplicable that she should have sought the distinction of making Hippolyte Charles her lover. He was fascinating, witty, dressed with splendour, and was quite up to her standard of moral quality. The friendship grew into intimacy, so that he became a frequent visitor to Josephine during Napoleon's absence.
It was scarcely likely that this love affair, which was assuming dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the knowledge of Napoleon. The mocking critics of the camp and the stern moralists amongst the civilians vied with each other in babbling commentary of the growing dilapidated reputation that the Commander-in-Chief's wife was precipitately acquiring. Wherever she is or goes, so long as Bonaparte is at a safe distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts. Some writers have said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa to attend the fêtes given by the Republic he was in attendance, and it is most likely that this clumsy act of strategy on the part of Josephine brought about the climax. Unquestionably her movements were being watched by members of the Bonaparte family. They not unnaturally felt that the scandal was exposing them as well as their brother to ridicule.
But, as frequently happens, great events are brought about in the most unexpected way. The vivacious Paulette had fallen in love with Freron, a man of forty, holding a high position in the Government service. Napoleon was strongly averse to the match, so decided that she should become the wife of General Leclerc, aged twenty-five, who was said to be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte Charles had been the friend of Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely set her mind on inflicting salutary punishment on her sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging little vixen had put a big spoke in the wheel, although there were other powerful agencies that had no small part in bringing light to the aching and devout heart.
From this dates the fall of Josephine's complete magical divinity over him, and a new era begins. We hear no more of "shutting her up in his heart," or of sending her "kisses as fiery as his soul and as chaste as herself"; though to the end his letters are studiously kind and even reverential.
Meanwhile, the intrepid General, having brought the campaign of Italy and Austria to a successful end, came back to Paris, received the plaudits of a grateful and adoring nation, and the doubtful favour of a jealous Directory. They banqueted him at the Luxembourg with every outward sign of satisfaction. Talleyrand and Barras made eloquent and flattering speeches of his accomplishments and talents, and the latter folded him in his arms as a concluding token of affection. Josephine revelled in the gaiety and honours that encompassed them, while her husband sought the consolation of privacy.
After a short though not inactive stay in Paris, he was given command of the Army of the East, and sailed from Toulon on May 19, 1798, in the Orient (which came to a tragic end at Aboukir), and Josephine waved her handkerchief, soaked in tears, as the fleet passed from view.
Her doings do not interest us until she again came across the young ex-officer Charles in Paris, some time in 1799, and, at his request no doubt, she introduced him to a firm of army contractors, and for the ostensible purpose of showing his gratitude, he called at Malmaison to thank her. This act of grace could have been done with greater propriety by letter, though there may have been reasons for not putting in writing anything that might associate the wife of the Commander-in-Chief with having dealings with army contractors, even to the extent of interesting herself on behalf of a man who was dismissed the service for carrying on an intrigue with his General's wife, who happened to be Josephine herself.
But putting aside the unpardonable breach of faith in allowing a renewal of the intimacy with such a man, the fact of a lady in her position being mixed up with a firm of this character might have seriously compromised Napoleon, and for this reason alone her act was highly reprehensible. Charles was not slow to avail himself of Josephine's hospitality, and became a regular visitor. This further lapse of loyalty to the absent husband was transmitted to Egypt, and very naturally determined him on the necessity of taking proceedings to get a divorce, but although Napoleon had ceased, so far as he could, to be the dreadful simpleton lover of other days, he failed to gauge the grip the old fascination had of him.
He believed the avenging spirit that guided him to definite conclusions was real, and with the thought of "divorce, public and sensational divorce," buzzing in his head, combined with another of State policy lurking in the background, he set sail for France, and created wild excitement in domestic and Directorial circles by unexpectedly landing at Fréjus.
He then made his way, as quickly as the enthusiasm of the cheering populace allowed him, towards his house in the Rue de la Victoire; but the penitent (?) Josephine was not there. She had gone to meet him, taken the wrong road, and missed throwing herself into his arms as was her intention. He asks excitedly, "Is she ill?" and the significant wink of her enemies threw him into paroxysms of grief. His friend Collot calls and reminds him that the hope of the nation is centred on him. His wrath is proof that he is still in love, and Collot fears that the magical effect of her appearance will bring forgiveness. "Never," shouts the irate husband. "How little you know me, Collot. Rather than abase myself, I would tear my heart out and throw it on the fire."
But Collot knew him better than he chose to admit he knew himself, and we shall see that his heart was not thrown "on the fire," but given again to the erring Josephine, who was travelling back post-haste from Lyons. She arrived broken in spirit and wearied unto death. Napoleon, obviously not quite sure of his determination to refuse her admittance, had bolted the door, and was stamping about the room with a glare in his piercing eye as though he were planning an onslaught that was to be furiously contested. Josephine arrives, knocks at the door, implores him to open it, and addresses him as "Mon ami, mon bon ami." There is no response, and in her frenzy of despair she weeps and beats her head against the door, and piteously pleads for the opportunity of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then her unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to their distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn. Their stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his feet and appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he has ever been, and to receive their mother back to his affections.
It is all over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against tears, so sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and faints. She is tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful fate, and when Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning, to take instructions for the impending divorce proceedings, that horror had disappeared from their outlook, and both Josephine and Napoleon were wrapped in a drowsy joy.
Josephine, gifted with irresistible subtlety and skilful in the art and use of hysteria, had rekindled the embers of infatuation that was never more to be totally quenched. In all likelihood she would give a different explanation of her conduct to Napoleon than that given him by Lucien and other members of his family. It is not an undue stretch of imagination to conclude that she assured him that her heart was shared with none other, though the assertion may be regarded as a daring fabrication. She did not gauge calmly, but she gauged well, the supreme power she had over the man who had so abjectly shown her such inflammable love. She knew, too, of his vanity, and hit him caressingly on the spot. The cry of "he and none other," combined with a beseeching wail that he should open his heart to an affectionate and faithful love, was more likely to conquer than any admission of wrong. Could she forget the oft-repeated declaration that his ruling principle was that he would have no divided affection? It must be all or none. The hypothesis is therefore that she played on his vanity, and not on his confidence or judgment, the sequel being the complete surrender of Napoleon.
Josephine, whether from fear of the penalty or the purity of her motives, never again allowed herself to be placed in the same hazardous position. She had been cured of unfaithfulness, and promised that Hippolyte Charles should never be allowed to lead her into such a scrape again. He was put out of her life, and was never more heard of. He was seen but once more by Napoleon, and the sight of his evil face nearly caused the Emperor the humiliation of a collapse.
Josephine's matrimonial transgressions, whatever they may have been, were condoned with exuberant suddenness, and Napoleon rushed into domestic tranquillity. The zealot of freedom forthwith concentrated his wondrous talents with aggressive righteousness on the task of destroying a decadence that was bearing France to her doom. Josephine was enrolled as patron of deliverance from anarchy, and having all the essential attributes which make for success in such an enterprise, she daily filled her salon with men and women who had influence to aid her husband and his friends in upsetting the Government. She had developed into an attractive, graceful hostess, and was endowed with the knack of cajoling which disarmed opposition and enthused supporters, and unquestionably she played the part given to her with unmeasured success, and Napoleon did the rest.
The coup d'état had been dexterously planned, which enabled him to bring about a bloodless overthrow. Josephine was deployed to win over her friend Gohier, the President of the Directory. She invited him and his wife to breakfast on the 17th Brumaire. Gohier wonders why they should be asked so early as six in the morning. He thinks he smells a rat, excuses himself, but sends his wife, who is ushered into the presence of a houseful of officers of the National Guard, and the hostess does not lose time in conveying to Gohier's former cook the meaning of their being there. Bonaparte, be it known, is determined to form a Government, and it grieves her that so good a friend as the President of Directors should have been so thoughtless of his own interests as not to accompany his wife on such an auspicious occasion.
"The inevitable is at hand, Madame Gohier," says Josephine in effect, "and at this very moment Barras is being pressed to resign, and if he disobeys his fate is sealed." Madame Gohier is aghast, stiffens her back, and with as much dignity as her nature will allow, she bows, withdraws, and hastens to the side of her husband, to convey all she has seen and heard.
Meanwhile, events travel swiftly under the direction of the intrepid General. He walks into the Council of Ancients and jerks out with vivid flashes of oratory the object of his visit. The members see at a glance its meaning. They become inarticulate with rage begotten of fear. He thunders out, "I am here to demand a Republic founded on true liberty," and swears that he will have it. In the Hall of the Five Hundred he is met with cries of "Down with the Cromwell!" "No Dictator!" "Outlaw him!" and so forth.
But these are mere futile belchings of exasperated gasbags, on whom he darts a look of withering scorn, which they discern means trouble if they do not conduct themselves with decorum. His guards are close at hand, and he is daring enough to make use of them if there is any resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent conclusions. What I want to know is: What have you done with this France which I left you so glorious? I left you peace; I return and find war! I left you victories; I find reverses! I left you the millions of Italy; I find despoiling laws and misery throughout!" But ere this terrific indictment had been thrust at them, they had become conscious that their dissolute and chaotic regime was at an end, and that Napoleon had become the ruler of the France he had left prosperous and found tottering to pieces on his return from Egypt.
Josephine had played her part in the drama with surprising shrewdness and marked devotion to her husband's cause. He was rewarded by being made First Consul, and she by becoming the first lady of the Republic and the leader of society. They quickly availed themselves of the distinction by removing from their humble habitation, first to the Petit Luxembourg and then to the Tuileries, where she occupied the bedroom of the famous Marie Antoinette and the apartments formerly inhabited by Louis, which were immediately above. They gathered round them men of merit representing science, art, literature, law, politics, military notables, and fashion. They set up, in fact, a little Court, but lived a quiet, unostentatious life, so far as it was diplomatic and permissive.
It was not until the advent of the Empire that gaiety and grandeur began, excelling and putting into the shade every other Court in Europe. Josephine wallowed in it, but Napoleon adopted and encouraged it more from policy than taste. In fact, when in a whimsical mood, he often said it bored him. That is not to say that he did not adapt himself to what he believed was a necessity. An Oriental potentate could not have carried the dignity of splendour more naturally than he. Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance, fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his brother Louis, and went without himself. To his intimate friends he was accustomed to relate the story, not in a whining manner, but with a vividness and pathos that brought tears to the eyes of every one who heard it.