France in the Nineteenth Century. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
family sitting-room was furnished with the princesses' embroidery, and there was a table painted on velvet by the Duchesse de Berri. The library was large, and contained many English books, among them a magnificent edition of Shakspeare. The park enclosed one hundred acres. The gardens were laid out in the English style. A branch of the Seine ran through the grounds, with boat-houses and bath-houses for the pleasure of the young princes—and in one night this cherished home was laid in ruins!
"All is possible," said Louis Philippe to a visitor who talked with him at Claremont in his exile, "all is possible to France—an empire, a republic, the Comte de Chambord, or my grandson; but one thing is impossible—that any of these should last. On a tué le respect—the nation has killed respect."
Queen Marie Amélie was born in Naples in 1782. Her mother was a daughter of Maria Theresa, and sister to Marie Antoinette. This lady was not one who inspired respect, but she had some good qualities. She was a good mother to her children, and had plenty of ability. Of course she hated the French Revolution, and everything that savored of what are called liberal opinions. Her career, which was full of vicissitudes and desperate plots, ended by her being dismissed ignominiously from Naples by the English ambassador, and she went to end her days with her nephew at Vienna.
Marie Amélie used sometimes to tell her children how she had wept when a child for the death of the little dauphin, the eldest son of Louis XVI., who, before the Revolution broke out, was taken away from the evil to come. She was to have been married to him had he lived. When older, she had an early love-affair with her cousin, Prince Antoine of Austria; but he was destined for the Church, and the youthful courtship came to an untimely end. When she first met her future husband, she and her family were living in a sort of provisional exile in Palermo. The princess was twenty-seven, Louis Philippe was ten or twelve years older, and they seem to have been quite determined to marry each other very soon after their acquaintance began. It was not easy to do so, however, for the duke, as we have seen, was at that period too much a republican to suit even an English Admiral; but the princess declared that she would go into a convent if the marriage was forbidden, and on Dec. 25, 1809, she became the wife of Louis Philippe.
No description could do justice to the purity and charity of this admirable woman; and in her good works she was seconded by her sister-in-law, Madame Adélaïde, and by her daughter.
"The queen," her almoner tells us, "had 500,000 francs a year for her personal expenses, and gave away 400,000 of them." "M. Appert," she would say to him, "give those 500 francs we spoke of, but put them down upon next month's account. The waters run low this month; my purse is empty." An American lady, visiting the establishment of a great dressmaker in Paris, observed an old black silk dress hanging over a chair. She remarked with some surprise: "I did not know you would turn and fix up old dresses." "I do so only for the queen," was the answer.
The imposture, ingratitude, and even insolence of some of Marie Amélie's petitioners failed to discourage her benevolence. For instance, an old Bonapartist lady, according to M. Appert, one day wrote to her:—
MADAME—If the Bourbons had not returned to France, for the misfortune of the country, my beloved mistress and protectress, the Empress Marie Louise, would still be on the throne, and I should not be under the humiliating necessity of telling you that I am without bread, and that the wretched bed on which I sleep is about to be thrown out of the garret I inhabit, because I cannot pay a year's rent. I dare not ask you for assistance, for my heart is with my real sovereign, and I cannot promise you my gratitude. If, however, you think fit to preserve a life which, since the misfortunes of my country, has been full of bitterness, I will accept a loan. I should blush to receive a gift.
I am, Madame, your servant, C.
When this impertinent letter was handed to the almoner, the queen had written on it: "She must be very unhappy, for she is very unjust. A hundred francs to be sent to her immediately, and I beg M. Appert to make inquiries concerning this lady's circumstances."
In vain the almoner remonstrated. The only effect of his remonstrance was that the queen authorized him to make her gift 300 francs if he found it necessary. When he knocked at the door of the garret of the petitioner, she opened it with agitation. "Oh, Monsieur!" she said, "are you the Commissioner of Police come to arrest me for my outrageous letter to the queen? I am so unhappy that at times I became deranged. I am sorry to have written as I did to a princess who to all the poor is good and charitable." For answer, M. Appert showed her her own letter, with the queen's memorandum written upon it. "There was no lack of heartfelt gratitude then," he says, "and no lack of poverty to need the triple benefaction."
CHAPTER III.
LOUIS NAPOLEON'S EARLY CAREER.—STRASBURG, BOULOGNE, HAM.
There is a theory held by some observers that the man who fails in his duty to a woman who has claims upon his love and his protection, never afterwards prospers; and perhaps the most striking illustration of this theory may be found in the career of the Emperor Napoleon. Nothing went well with him after his divorce from Josephine. His only son died. The children of his brothers, with the exception of Louis Napoleon, and the Prince de Canino, the son of Lucien, were all ordinary men, inclined to the fast life of their period; while the descendants of Josephine, honored and respected, are now connected with many European thrones.
The son of Napoleon, called by his grandfather, the Austrian emperor, the Duc de Reichstadt, but by his own Bonaparte family Napoleon II., died at Vienna, July 22, 1832. The person from whom, during his short, sad life, he had received most kindness, and to whom, during his illness, he was indebted for almost maternal care, was the young wife of his cousin Francis, the Princess Sophia of Bavaria, who in the same week that he died, became the mother of Maximilian, the unfortunate Emperor of Mexico, who, exactly thirty-five years after, on July 22, 1867, was shot at Queretaro.
The Emperor Napoleon had made a decree that if male heirs failed him, his dynasty should be continued by the sons of his brother Joseph. Lucien, the republican, was passed over, as well as his descendants; and Joseph failing of male heirs, the throne of France was to devolve on Louis, king of Holland, and his heirs. Joseph left only daughters, Zénaide and Charlotte. Louis Bonaparte when he died, left but one son.
Louis Bonaparte was nine years younger than his brother Napoleon, who by no right of primogeniture, but by right of success, was early looked upon as the head of the family of Bonaparte. He assumed the place of father to his little brother Louis, and a very unsatisfactory father he proved. Louis was studious, poetical, solid, honorable, and unambitious. His brother was resolved to make him a distinguished general and an able king. He succeeded in making him a brave soldier and a very good general; but Louis had no enthusiasm for the profession of arms. He hated bloodshed, and above all he hated sack and pillage. He had no genius, and crooked ways of any kind were abhorrent to him. When a very young man he fell passionately in love with a lady, whom he called his Sophie. But his brother and the world thought the real name of the object of his affection was Emilie de Beauharnais, the Empress Josephine's niece by marriage. This lady became afterwards the wife of M. de La Vallette, Napoleon's postmaster-general, who after the return of the Bourbons in 1815, was condemned to death with Ney and Labédoyère. His wife saved him by changing clothes with him in prison; but the fearful strain her nerves suffered until she was sure of his escape, unsettled her reason. She was not sent to an asylum, but lived to a great age in an appartement in Paris, carefully tended and watched over by her friends.[1]
[Footnote 1: Jerrold's Life of Napoleon III.]
But whether it was with a Sophie or an Emilie, Louis Bonaparte fell in love, and Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Josephine, gay, lively, poetical, and enthusiastic, had given her heart to General Duroc, the Emperor Napoleon's aide-de-camp; therefore both the young people resisted the darling project of Napoleon and Josephine to marry them to each other. By such a marriage Josephine hoped to