Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and pathetic power.
All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great deed of daring.
Charlotte Corday—Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand—was a native of Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors. Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers, and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants—a fact which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her "the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution."
She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned inward, brooding over many things.
After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers, especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.
More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a glorious fate might be her own.
Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which she cared.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women to a gory death.
In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.
In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure—an accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.
On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however, he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to behold.
It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she might free her country from this hideous tyrant.
In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory. There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.
To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official description of the girl. It reads:
Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age, five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.
Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour. Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put you in such condition as to render great service to France.
This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water; and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying in a large tub.
A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.
As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists were plotting there.
To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:
"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days!"
As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and a portion of his heart.
Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:
"Help, darling!"
His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it, for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye, and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:
"Nothing—except that I succeeded!"
A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly, declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt. She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she had accomplices.
"Who prompted you to do this deed?" roared Tinville.
"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient."
"In what, then, had Marat wronged you?"
"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in the fires of civil war."
"But whom did you expect to benefit?" insinuated the prosecutor.
"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand."
"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats?"
"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning."
Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.
This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan. Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.
As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the picture he had imagined!
A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his liberty and his life.
He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice. When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an instant won the adoration of his heart.
Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy, did he behold the heroine of his dreams.
On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river. Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful, unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of the knife.
At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze. Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last and only plea:
"My duty is enough—the rest is nothing!"
Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own destruction.
He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed, and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last sentences are as follows:
The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar, from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her adorer!
This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life. Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.
Little did the judges understand the fiery heart of the man they had to deal with. To die on the same scaffold as the woman whom he had idealized was to him the crowning triumph of his romantic love. He gave a prompt and insolent refusal to their offer. He swore that if released he would denounce his darling's murderers with a still greater passion.
In anger the tribunal sentenced him to death. Only then he smiled and thanked his judges courteously, and soon after went blithely to the guillotine like a bridegroom to his marriage feast.
Adam Lux! Spirit courtship had been carried on silently all through that terrible cross-examination of Charlotte Corday. His heart was betrothed to hers in that single gleam of the setting sun when she bowed beneath the knife. One may believe that these two souls were finally united when the same knife fell sullenly upon his neck and when his life-blood sprinkled the altar that was still stained with hers.
There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into account by the student of his imperial career. The great emperor was susceptible to feminine charms at all times; but just as it used to be said of him that "his smile never rose above his eyes," so it might as truly be said that in most instances the throbbing of his heart did not affect his actions.
Women to him were the creatures of the moment, although he might seem to care for them and to show his affection in extravagant ways, as in his affair with Mlle. Georges, the beautiful but rather tiresome actress. As for Mme. de Stael, she bored him to distraction by her assumption of wisdom. That was not the kind of woman that Napoleon cared for. He preferred that a woman should be womanly, and not a sort of owl to sit and talk with him about the theory of government.
When it came to married women they interested him only because of the children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he would snap out, sharply:
"How many children have you?"
If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had none he would turn upon her sharply and say:
"Then go home and have some!"
Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine, because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young soldier was fascinated by her—the more because she was older than he and possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the world. When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of the army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne by ragged troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of Austria.
She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held him to the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was her failure to do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry the thick-lipped Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when he showed signs of regret and said:
"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine!"
Marie Louise was of importance for a time—the short time when she entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little King of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and letting her son—l'Aiglon—die in a land that was far from France.
Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds, perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She would gladly have followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been permitted. Remaining behind, she did everything possible in conspiring to secure his freedom.
But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little. Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on the emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.
On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with his cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he seemed a very demigod of battle.
True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had speedily been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and most brilliant of all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and Russia humbled to the very ground before him.
Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great; but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the Prussian forces to the Russian border.
As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by thousands to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed down to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a free and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.
Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the Emperor of Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles themselves to win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant soldiers, who believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting for the final independence of their native land.
Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among the Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something like adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift what all desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards. Princes and nobles flocked about him. Those who stayed at home repeated wonderful stories of his victories and prayed for him and fed the flame which spread through all the country. It was felt that no sacrifice was too great to win his favor; that to him, as to a deity, everything that he desired should be yielded up, since he was to restore the liberty of Poland.
And hence, when the carriage of the emperor dashed into Bronia, surrounded by Polish lancers and French cuirassiers, the enormous crowd surged forward and blocked the way so that their hero could not pass because of their cheers and cries and supplications.
In the midst of it all there came a voice of peculiar sweetness from the thickest portion of the crowd.
"Please let me pass!" said the voice. "Let me see him, if only for a moment!"
The populace rolled backward, and through the lane which they made a beautiful girl with dark blue eyes that flamed and streaming hair that had become loosened about her radiant face was confronting the emperor. Carried away by her enthusiasm, she cried:
"Thrice welcome to Poland! We can do or say nothing to express our joy in the country which you will surely deliver from its tyrant."
The emperor bowed and, with a smile, handed a great bouquet of roses to the girl, for her beauty and her enthusiasm had made a deep impression on him.
"Take it," said he, "as a proof of my admiration. I trust that I may have the pleasure of meeting you at Warsaw and of hearing your thanks from those beautiful lips."
In a moment more the trumpets rang out shrilly, the horsemen closed up beside the imperial carriage, and it rolled away amid the tumultuous shouting of the populace.
The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska, descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When she was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in Poland, the Count Walewska. He was three or four times her age, yet her dark blue eyes, her massive golden hair, and the exquisite grace of her figure led him to plead that she might become his wife. She had accepted him, but the marriage was that of a mere child, and her interest still centered upon her country and took the form of patriotism rather than that of wifehood and maternity.
It was for this reason that the young Countess had visited Bronia. She was now eighteen years of age and still had the sort of romantic feeling which led her to think that she would keep in some secret hiding-place the bouquet which the greatest man alive had given her.
But Napoleon was not the sort of man to forget anything that had given him either pleasure or the reverse. He who, at the height of his cares, could recall instantly how many cannon were in each seaport of France and could make out an accurate list of all his military stores; he who could call by name every soldier in his guard, with a full remembrance of the battles each man had fought in and the honors that he had won—he was not likely to forget so lovely a face as the one which had gleamed with peculiar radiance through the crowd at Bronia.
On reaching Warsaw he asked one or two well-informed persons about this beautiful stranger. Only a few hours had passed before Prince Poniatowski, accompanied by other nobles, called upon her at her home.
"I am directed, madam," said he, "by order of the Emperor of France, to bid you to be present at a ball that is to be given in his honor to-morrow evening."
Mme. Walewska was startled, and her face grew hot with blushes. Did the emperor remember her escapade at Bronia? If so, how had he discovered her? Why should he seek her out and do her such an honor?
"That, madam, is his imperial majesty's affair," Poniatowski told her. "I merely obey his instructions and ask your presence at the ball. Perhaps Heaven has marked you out to be the means of saving our unhappy country."
In this way, by playing on her patriotism, Poniatowski almost persuaded her, and yet something held her back. She trembled, though she was greatly fascinated; and finally she refused to go.
Scarcely had the envoy left her, however, when a great company of nobles entered in groups and begged her to humor the emperor. Finally her own husband joined in their entreaties and actually commanded her to go; so at last she was compelled to yield.
It was by no means the frank and radiant girl who was now preparing again to meet the emperor. She knew not why, and yet her heart was full of trepidation and nervous fright, the cause of which she could not guess, yet which made her task a severe ordeal. She dressed herself in white satin, with no adornment save a wreath of foliage in her hair.
As she entered the ballroom she was welcomed by hundreds whom she had never seen before, but who were of the highest nobility of Poland. Murmurs of admiration followed her, and finally Poniatowski came to her and complimented her, besides bringing her a message that the emperor desired her to dance with him.
"I am very sorry," she said, with a quiver of the lips, "but I really cannot dance. Be kind enough to ask the emperor to excuse me."
But at that very moment she felt some strange magnetic influence; and without looking up she could feel that Napoleon himself was standing by her as she sat with blanched face and downcast eyes, not daring to look up at him.
"White upon white is a mistake, madam," said the emperor, in his gentlest tones. Then, stooping low, he whispered, "I had expected a far different reception."
She neither smiled nor met his eyes. He stood there for a moment and then passed on, leaving her to return to her home with a heavy heart. The young countess felt that she had acted wrongly, and yet there was an instinct—an instinct that she could not conquer.
In the gray of the morning, while she was still tossing feverishly, her maid knocked at the door and brought her a hastily scribbled note. It ran as follows:
I saw none but you, I admired none but you; I desire only you. Answer at once, and calm the impatient ardor of—N.
These passionate words burned from her eyes the veil that had hidden the truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an actual verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets to hail the possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she shrunk from him when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough now. This bedside missive meant that he had intended her dishonor and that he had looked upon her simply as a possible mistress.
At once she crushed the note angrily in her hand.
"There is no answer at all," said she, bursting into bitter tears at the very thought that he should dare to treat her in this way.
But on the following morning when she awoke her maid was standing beside her with a second letter from Napoleon. She refused to open it and placed it in a packet with the first letter, and ordered that both of them should be returned to the emperor.
She shrank from speaking to her husband of what had happened, and there was no one else in whom she dared confide. All through that day there came hundreds of visitors, either of princely rank or men who had won fame by their gallantry and courage. They all begged to see her, but to them all she sent one answer—that she was ill and could see no one.
After a time her husband burst into her room, and insisted that she should see them.
"Why," exclaimed he, "you are insulting the greatest men and the noblest women of Poland! More than that, there are some of the most distinguished Frenchmen sitting at your doorstep, as it were. There is Duroc, grand marshal of France, and in refusing to see him you are insulting the great emperor on whom depends everything that our country longs for. Napoleon has invited you to a state dinner and you have given him no answer whatever. I order you to rise at once and receive these ladies and gentlemen who have done you so much honor!"
She could not refuse. Presently she appeared in her drawing-room, where she was at once surrounded by an immense throng of her own countrymen and countrywomen, who made no pretense of misunderstanding the situation. To them, what was one woman's honor when compared with the freedom and independence of their nation? She was overwhelmed by arguments and entreaties. She was even accused of being disloyal to the cause of Poland if she refused her consent.
One of the strangest documents of that period was a letter sent to her and signed by the noblest men in Poland. It contained a powerful appeal to her patriotism. One remarkable passage even quotes the Bible to point out her line of duty. A portion of this letter ran as follows:
Did Esther, think you, give herself to Ahasuerus out of the fulness of her love for him? So great was the terror with which he inspired her that she fainted at the sight of him. We may therefore conclude that affection had but little to do with her resolve. She sacrificed her own inclinations to the salvation of her country, and that salvation it was her glory to achieve. May we be enabled to say the same of you, to your glory and our own happiness!
After this letter came others from Napoleon himself, full of the most humble pleading. It was not wholly distasteful thus to have the conqueror of the world seek her out and offer her his adoration any more than it was distasteful to think that the revival of her own nation depended on her single will. M. Frederic Masson, whose minute studies regarding everything relating to Napoleon have won him a seat in the French Academy, writes of Marie Walewska at this time: Every force was now brought into play against her. Her country, her friends, her religion, the Old and the New Testaments, all urged her to yield; they all combined for the ruin of a simple and inexperienced girl of eighteen who had no parents, whose husband even thrust her into temptation, and whose friends thought that her downfall would be her glory.
Amid all these powerful influences she consented to attend the dinner. To her gratification Napoleon treated her with distant courtesy, and, in fact, with a certain coldness.
"I heard that Mme. Walewska was indisposed. I trust that she has recovered," was all the greeting that he gave her when they met.
Every one else with whom she spoke overwhelmed her with flattery and with continued urging; but the emperor himself for a time acted as if she had displeased him. This was consummate art; for as soon as she was relieved of her fears she began to regret that she had thrown her power away.
During the dinner she let her eyes wander to those of the emperor almost in supplication. He, the subtlest of men, knew that he had won. His marvelous eyes met hers and drew her attention to him as by an electric current; and when the ladies left the great dining-room Napoleon sought her out and whispered in her ear a few words of ardent love.
It was too little to alarm her seriously now. It was enough to make her feel that magnetism which Napoleon knew so well how to evoke and exercise. Again every one crowded about her with congratulations. Some said:
"He never even saw any of US. His eyes were all for YOU! They flashed fire as he looked at you."
"You have conquered his heart," others said, "and you can do what you like with him. The salvation of Poland is in your hands."
The company broke up at an early hour, but Mme. Walewska was asked to remain. When she was alone General Duroc—one of the emperor's favorite officers and most trusted lieutenants—entered and placed a letter from Napoleon in her lap. He tried to tell her as tactfully as possible how much harm she was doing by refusing the imperial request. She was deeply affected, and presently, when Duroc left her, she opened the letter which he had given her and read it. It was worded thus:
There are times when all splendors become oppressive, as I feel but too deeply at the present moment. How can I satisfy the desires of a heart that yearns to cast itself at your feet, when its impulses are checked at every point by considerations of the highest moment? Oh, if you would, you alone might overcome the obstacles that keep us apart. MY FRIEND DUROC WILL MAKE ALL EASY FOR YOU. Oh, come, come! Your every wish shall be gratified! Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity on my poor heart. N.
Every chance of escape seemed to be closed. She had Napoleon's own word that he would free Poland in return for her self-sacrifice. Moreover, her powers of resistance had been so weakened that, like many women, she temporized. She decided that she would meet the emperor alone. She would tell him that she did not love him, and yet would plead with him to save her beloved country.
As she sat there every tick of the clock stirred her to a new excitement. At last there came a knock upon the door, a cloak was thrown about her from behind, a heavy veil was drooped about her golden hair, and she was led, by whom she knew not, to the street, where a finely appointed carriage was waiting for her.
No sooner had she entered it than she was driven rapidly through the darkness to the beautifully carved entrance of a palace. Half led, half carried, she was taken up the steps to a door which was eagerly opened by some one within. There were warmth and light and color and the scent of flowers as she was placed in a comfortable arm-chair. Her wrappings were taken from her, the door was closed behind her; and then, as she looked up, she found herself in the presence of Napoleon, who was kneeling at her feet and uttering soothing words.
Wisely, the emperor used no violence. He merely argued with her; he told her over and over his love for her; and finally he declared that for her sake he would make Poland once again a strong and splendid kingdom.
Several hours passed. In the early morning, before daylight, there came a knock at the door.
"Already?" said Napoleon. "Well, my plaintive dove, go home and rest. You must not fear the eagle. In time you will come to love him, and in all things you shall command him."
Then he led her to the door, but said that he would not open it unless she promised to see him the next day—a promise which she gave the more readily because he had treated her with such respect.
On the following morning her faithful maid came to her bedside with a cluster of beautiful violets, a letter, and several daintily made morocco cases. When these were opened there leaped out strings and necklaces of exquisite diamonds, blazing in the morning sunlight. Mme. Walewska seized the jewels and flung them across the room with an order that they should be taken back at once to the imperial giver; but the letter, which was in the same romantic strain as the others, she retained.
On that same evening there was another dinner, given to the emperor by the nobles, and Marie Walewska attended it, but of course without the diamonds, which she had returned. Nor did she wear the flowers which had accompanied the diamonds.
When Napoleon met her he frowned upon her and made her tremble with the cold glances that shot from his eyes of steel. He scarcely spoke to her throughout the meal, but those who sat beside her were earnest in their pleading.
Again she waited until the guests had gone away, and with a lighter heart, since she felt that she had nothing to fear. But when she met Napoleon in his private cabinet, alone, his mood was very different from that which he had shown before. Instead of gentleness and consideration he was the Napoleon of camps, and not of courts. He greeted her bruskly.
"I scarcely expected to see you again," said he. "Why did you refuse my diamonds and my flowers? Why did you avoid my eyes at dinner? Your coldness is an insult which I shall not brook." Then he raised his voice to that rasping, almost blood-curdling tone which even his hardiest soldiers dreaded: "I will have you know that I mean to conquer you. You SHALL—yes, I repeat it, you SHALL love me! I have restored the name of your country. It owes its very existence to me."
Then he resorted to a trick which he had played years before in dealing with the Austrians at Campo Formio.
"See this watch which I am holding in my hand. Just as I dash it to fragments before you, so will I shatter Poland if you drive me to desperation by rejecting my heart and refusing me your own."
As he spoke he hurled the watch against the opposite wall with terrific force, dashing it to pieces. In terror, Mme. Walewska fainted. When she resumed consciousness there was Napoleon wiping away her tears with the tenderness of a woman and with words of self-reproach.
The long siege was over. Napoleon had conquered, and this girl of eighteen gave herself up to his caresses and endearments, thinking that, after all, her love of country was more than her own honor.
Her husband, as a matter of form, put her away from him, though at heart he approved what she had done, while the Polish people regarded her as nothing less than a national heroine. To them she was no minister to the vices of an emperor, but rather one who would make him love Poland for her sake and restore its greatness.
So far as concerned his love for her, it was, indeed, almost idolatry. He honored her in every way and spent all the time at his disposal in her company. But his promise to restore Poland he never kept, and gradually she found that he had never meant to keep it.
"I love your country," he would say, "and I am willing to aid in the attempt to uphold its rights, but my first duty is to France. I cannot shed French blood in a foreign cause."
By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for his own sake. She could not resist his ardor, which matched the ardor of the Poles themselves. Moreover, it flattered her to see the greatest soldier in the world a suppliant for her smiles.
For some years she was Napoleon's close companion, spending long hours with him and finally accompanying him to Paris. She was the mother of Napoleon's only son who lived to manhood. This son, who bore the name of Alexandre Florian de Walewski, was born in Poland in 1810, and later was created a count and duke of the second French Empire. It may be said parenthetically that he was a man of great ability. Living down to 1868, he was made much of by Napoleon III., who placed him in high offices of state, which he filled with distinction. In contrast with the Duc de Morny, who was Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother, Alexandre de Walewski stood out in brilliant contrast. He would have nothing to do with stock-jobbing and unseemly speculation.
"I may be poor," he said—though he was not poor—"but at least I remember the glory of my father and what is due to his great name."
As for Mme. Walewska, she was loyal to the emperor, and lacked the greed of many women whom he had made his favorites. Even at Elba, when he was in exile and disgrace, she visited him that she might endeavor to console him. She was his counselor and friend as well as his earnestly loved mate. When she died in Paris in 1817, while the dethroned emperor was a prisoner at St. Helena, the word "Napoleon" was the last upon her lips.
It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once declared:
"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do them good."
It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far the great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness, their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.
There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name we think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on to bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver; but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech to women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the thousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled—and perhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion that her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial favor and had failed to win it.
But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and palaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great man was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a certain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them prey upon him almost without end.
He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in order to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with friendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.
He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother, Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty and brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis, for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland, and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving at many things which were inimical to France. He was planning high advancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a disreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was received with pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.
So much for his brothers—incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes. But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which they bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans," and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle and monsters of ingratitude.
Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them—by Caroline and Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the height of his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:
"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last!"
Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred. Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they became respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very little—less, in fact, than for any other member of his family—and yet she alone stood by him to the end.
This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat, nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because of her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte illustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to turn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in her fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the one redeeming trait of gratitude.
To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what used to be called "femininity." We have to-day another and a higher definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman—"woman to the tips of her rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted by her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty from her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been called. Frederic Masson declares:
She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects common to women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained a perfection which may justly be called unique.
No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter lack of anything like a moral sense.
Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took up their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her wonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which she showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity. The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give them but little out of his scanty pay.
Pauline—or, as they called her in those days, Paulette—wore unbecoming hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in love with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is the end of one of them:
I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love you, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!
This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to feel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as they had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and later a mansion at Milan.
By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood? Arnault says:
She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl—talking incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most serious persons of rank.
General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which they had behind the scenes. He says:
The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in the girls' room all the time when they were dressing.
Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen, and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the honor are interesting:
"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams are seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them—"
And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his mighty chief.
Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely the sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional way; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere with his sister's intrigues.
Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still in manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the negroes.
Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of pretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go on board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.
Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.
"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order six grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board forthwith."
And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a sort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her vanity were beyond belief.
But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French army. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical climate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline brought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still recovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid him the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with him.
"What a touching tribute to her dead husband!" said some one to Napoleon.
The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:
"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped."
Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other sisters—or perhaps because he loved her better—was very strict with her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the proprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.
Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of the fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure. He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest collection of diamonds in the world.
Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese. Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon; while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which she could not resist.
The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house, because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be the triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that should be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a background for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.
When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a moving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered her carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.
But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green velvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind. Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.
Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made the Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline on parting. The victory was hers.
There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady, one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended, in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological moment, when all the guests had just assembled.
She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon the assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume was of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands, spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in turn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied the head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were cameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in place by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were bare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.
Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline, who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing at the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to a companion, in a tone of compassion:
"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT!"
"For what?" returned her escort.
"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."
Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and looked wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutades say:
"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"
Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact, her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless, forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess wore her hair low enough to cover them.
This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterward styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride—"a sister of Bonaparte."
Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her; but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.
It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:
"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"
And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with propriety!
To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Caroline or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when she became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checking her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon was sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relatives to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and went back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.
Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two francs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of her fortune. When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815 she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by the English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sisters and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proud of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.
When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When he died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the particulars of that long agony."
As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she had lived—"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes; and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.
"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"