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+Project Gutenberg's Famous Affinities of History, V2, by Lyndon Orr
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Famous Affinities of History, V2
+       The Romance of Devotion
+
+Author: Lyndon Orr
+
+Posting Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #4690]
+Release Date: November, 2003
+First Posted: March 3, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS AFFINITIES OF HISTORY, V2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS AFFINITIES OF HISTORY
+
+
+THE ROMANCE OF DEVOTION
+
+
+BY
+
+LYNDON ORR
+
+
+
+VOLUME II of IV.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN
+  MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
+  THE STORY OF AARON BURR
+  GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
+  CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
+  NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
+  THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
+  THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE POTEMKIN
+
+
+It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived was
+in reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that the
+greatest Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But the
+Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other in
+something else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, made
+himself so French in sympathy and understanding as to be able to play
+upon the imagination of all France as a great musician plays upon a
+splendid instrument, with absolute sureness of touch and an ability to
+extract from it every one of its varied harmonies. So the Empress
+Catharine of Russia--perhaps the greatest woman who ever ruled a
+nation--though born of German parents, became Russian to the core and
+made herself the embodiment of Russian feeling and Russian aspiration.
+
+At the middle of the eighteenth century Russia was governed by the
+Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. In her own time, and
+for a long while afterward, her real capacity was obscured by her
+apparent indolence, her fondness for display, and her seeming
+vacillation; but now a very high place is accorded her in the history
+of Russian rulers. She softened the brutality that had reigned supreme
+in Russia. She patronized the arts. Her armies twice defeated Frederick
+the Great and raided his capital, Berlin. Had Elizabeth lived, she
+would probably have crushed him.
+
+In her early years this imperial woman had been betrothed to Louis XV.
+of France, but the match was broken off. Subsequently she entered into
+a morganatic marriage and bore a son who, of course, could not be her
+heir. In 1742, therefore, she looked about for a suitable successor,
+and chose her nephew, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp.
+
+Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so splendid a
+future, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress next sought for
+a girl who might marry the young prince and thus become the future
+Czarina. She thought first of Frederick the Great's sister; but
+Frederick shrank from this alliance, though it would have been of much
+advantage to him. He loved his sister--indeed, she was one of the few
+persons for whom he ever really cared. So he declined the offer and
+suggested instead the young Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy of
+Anhalt-Zerbst.
+
+The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of the
+semi-barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.
+
+The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized,
+half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneer
+of French elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery and
+lust. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frederick the Great was
+unwilling to have his sister plunged into such a life.
+
+But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia of
+Anhalt-Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young girl
+willingly accepted, the more so as her mother practically commanded it.
+This mother of hers was a grim, harsh German woman who had reared her
+daughter in the strictest fashion, depriving her of all pleasure with a
+truly puritanical severity. In the case of a different sort of girl
+this training would have crushed her spirit; but the Princess Sophia,
+though gentle and refined in manner, had a power of endurance which was
+toughened and strengthened by the discipline she underwent.
+
+And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was taken by
+her mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the Lutheran faith
+and was received into the Greek Church, changing her name to Catharine.
+Soon after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter,
+and from that moment began a career which was to make her the most
+powerful woman in the world.
+
+At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
+Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and
+her face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the
+fact that her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair.
+Her complexion was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She
+had a certain diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself
+with such instinctive dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in
+fact she was beneath the middle size. At the time of her marriage her
+figure was slight and graceful; only in after years did she become
+stout. Altogether, she came to St. Petersburg an attractive,
+pure-minded German maiden, with a character well disciplined, and
+possessing reserves of power which had not yet been drawn upon.
+
+Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold his
+sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of
+Catharine. Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which
+must have tried her very soul. This youth was only seventeen--a mere
+boy in age, and yet a full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his
+vices. Moreover, he had eccentricities which sometimes verged upon
+insanity. Too young to be admitted to the councils of his imperial
+aunt, he occupied his time in ways that were either ridiculous or vile.
+
+Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with a
+number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
+soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his
+delight to summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for
+various military offenses, and then to have the culprits executed,
+leaving their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day
+or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of
+the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her
+half-idiot husband.
+
+When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
+both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
+vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
+debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could
+be heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
+accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathic
+perversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute and
+repulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him with
+horror at his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloated
+face, with its little, twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose and
+distended nostrils, and his loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She was
+scarcely less repelled when a wholly different mood would seize upon
+him and he would declare himself her slave, attending her at court
+functions in the garb of a servant and professing an unbounded devotion
+for his bride.
+
+Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a long
+time to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments she
+would plead with him and strive to interest him in something better
+than his dogs and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was
+incorrigible. Though he had moments of sense and even of good feeling,
+these never lasted, and after them he would plunge headlong into the
+most frantic excesses that his half-crazed imagination could devise.
+
+It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good sense
+showed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She therefore
+gradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of
+doing those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.
+
+She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter the
+Great none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried to
+force upon the Russian people various forms of western civilization
+which were alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had striven to
+make his people Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French.
+Catharine, with a sure instinct, resolved that they should remain
+Russian, borrowing what they needed from other peoples, but stirred
+always by the Slavic spirit and swayed by a patriotism that was their
+own. To this end she set herself to become Russian. She acquired the
+Russian language patiently and accurately. She adopted the Russian
+costume, appearing, except on state occasions, in a simple gown of
+green, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered with
+diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as were
+gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor
+of the common people.
+
+It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman, escaped
+the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. The
+infidelities of Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothing
+as his wife. Among the nobles there were men whose force of character
+and of mind attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which the
+average Russian had no conception; and therefore it is not strange that
+Catharine, with her intense and sensitive nature, should have turned to
+some of these for the love which she had sought in vain from the half
+imbecile to whom she had been married.
+
+Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet,
+though it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should
+judge very gently the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life
+whence all the virtues seemed to be excluded. She bore several children
+before her thirtieth year, and it is very certain that a grave doubt
+exists as to their paternity. Among the nobles of the court were two
+whose courage and virility specially attracted her. The one with whom
+her name has been most often coupled was Gregory Orloff. He and his
+brother, Alexis Orloff, were Russians of the older type--powerful in
+frame, suave in manner except when roused, yet with a tigerish ferocity
+slumbering underneath. Their power fascinated Catharine, and it was
+currently declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.
+
+When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed Czar,
+after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways his
+elevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like those
+which had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians have
+given him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with his
+name; and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about is
+rather ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers,
+and had remained for several days drinking and carousing until he
+scarcely knew enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named
+Gudovitch, who was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into
+the banquet-hall, booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with
+indignation. Standing before Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of
+a battle trumpet, so that the sounds of revelry were hushed.
+
+"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who
+really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the
+glories of your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to
+take as your model? It will not be long before your people's love will
+be changed to hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and
+sloth. Prove that you are worthy of the faith which I and others have
+given you so loyally!"
+
+With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand two
+proclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which had
+become an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring
+to the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.
+
+The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the
+brain of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading
+them, hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that
+they expressed his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg,
+and great was the praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted
+only as any drunkard might act under the compulsion of a stronger will
+than his.
+
+As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of
+the wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy
+of his aunt, but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything
+that was German. His bodyguard was made up of German troops--thus
+exciting the jealousy of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German
+fashions. He boasted that his father had been an officer in the
+Prussian army. His crazy admiration for Frederick the Great reached the
+utmost verge of sycophancy.
+
+As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. He
+declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was really
+fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned to
+Catharine and hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly
+forgive--and least of all a woman such as Catharine, with her high
+spirit and imperial pride. He thrust his mistresses upon her; and at
+last he ordered her, with her own hand, to decorate the Countess
+Vorontzoff, who was known to be his maitresse en titre.
+
+It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her
+personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own
+defense. She was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the
+ground of his unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to
+make complaint. But she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad.
+If he questioned the paternity of their eldest son he might take
+measures to imprison Catharine or even to destroy her. Therefore she
+conferred with the Orloffs and other gentlemen, and their conference
+rapidly developed into a conspiracy.
+
+The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
+Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
+She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace.
+But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early
+one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.
+
+"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed!"
+
+Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
+barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out
+the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they
+clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately
+afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son;
+but as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by
+the soldiers, as empress in her own right.
+
+It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
+wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from
+the capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt
+would not acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to
+Ropsha and confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs,
+quite of their own accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a
+corrosive poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build
+and now quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff
+seized him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him
+till the blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate
+man was dead.
+
+Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save
+to accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the
+foreign ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent
+colic. When his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is
+said to have oozed out even through his hands, staining the gloves that
+had been placed upon them. No one believed the story of the colic; and
+some six years later Alexis Orloff told the truth with the utmost
+composure. The whole incident was characteristically Russian.
+
+It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of
+Catharine the Great--the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her
+statecraft, the vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire,
+and the impulse which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet
+these things ought to be remembered first of all when one thinks of the
+woman whom Voltaire once styled "the Semiramis of the North." Because
+she was so powerful, because no one could gainsay her, she led in
+private a life which has been almost more exploited than her great
+imperial achievements. And yet, though she had lovers whose names have
+been carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the law of womanhood--which
+is to love deeply and intensely only once.
+
+One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl,
+and when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to
+Gregory Orloff. She admired his strength, his daring, and his
+unscrupulousness. But to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to
+seem almost more brute than man. She could not turn to him for any of
+those delicate attentions which a woman loves so much, nor for that
+larger sympathy which wins the heart as well as captivates the senses.
+A writer of the time has said that Orloff would hasten with equal
+readiness from the arms of Catharine to the embraces of any flat-nosed
+Finn or filthy Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he might
+encounter in the streets.
+
+It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperial
+guards there came to her notice another man who--as he proved in a
+trifling and yet most significant manner--had those traits which Orloff
+lacked. Catharine had mounted, man--fashion, a cavalry horse, and, with
+a helmet on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. At
+that moment One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her,
+observed that her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at her
+side. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet
+and fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this
+slight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercised
+over his imperial mistress!
+
+When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched
+them with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then
+until the day of his death he was more to her than any other man had
+ever been. With others she might flirt and might go even further than
+flirtation; but she allowed no other favorite to share her confidence,
+to give advice, or to direct her policies.
+
+To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased her
+for the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another;
+but to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm.
+There was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knew her
+he was a man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after their
+intimate acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles,
+while afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and in
+every province of Greater Russia.
+
+He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for mere
+wealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the woman
+whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg,
+usually known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the most
+sumptuous entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
+
+In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound with
+unusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drew
+forth a book she found to her surprise that its pages were English
+bank-notes. The pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, of
+another, notes on the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes some
+were of solid gold, while others had pages of fine leather in which
+were set emeralds and rubies and diamonds and other gems. The story
+reads like a bit of fiction from the Arabian Nights. Yet, after all,
+this was only a small affair compared with other undertakings with
+which Potemkin sought to please her.
+
+Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empire by
+Potemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her new
+possessions. A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore her
+down the river Dnieper. The country through which she passed had been a
+year before an unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinary
+efforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities which
+had been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population which
+swarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. It
+was only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood and
+canvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming to
+have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, and
+beautiful stretches of fertile country. No human being ever wrought on
+so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.
+
+Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailing
+success to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He was
+handsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect which
+matched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on the
+other hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man,
+she could turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, he
+could understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thing
+that woman yearns for most--a kindred spirit that can understand
+without the slightest need of explanation.
+
+Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of this
+great woman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, heading
+armies or ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted with
+even greater fondness than before. And it was this rather than his
+victories over Turk and other oriental enemies that made Catharine
+trust him absolutely.
+
+When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy and
+at a time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death came
+upon him after he had fought against it with singular tenacity of
+purpose. Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he had
+entertained her in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as even
+Russia had never known before. Then he fell ill, though with high
+spirit he would not yield to illness. He ate rich meats and drank rich
+wines and bore himself as gallantly as ever. Yet all at once death came
+upon him while he was traveling in the south of Russia. His carriage
+was stopped, a rug was spread beneath a tree by the roadside, and there
+he died, in the country which he had added to the realms of Russia,
+
+The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the five
+years of life that still remained to her. The names of other men for
+whom she had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one
+man lived in her heart in death as he had done in life.
+
+Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, a
+creature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and
+have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the
+palace kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps
+one finds the chief interest of her story to lie in this--that besides
+being empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all
+else, at heart a woman.
+
+
+
+
+MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
+
+
+The English-speaking world long ago accepted a conventional view of
+Marie Antoinette. The eloquence of Edmund Burke in one brilliant
+passage has fixed, probably for all time, an enduring picture of this
+unhappy queen.
+
+When we speak or think of her we speak and think first of all of a
+dazzling and beautiful woman surrounded by the chivalry of France and
+gleaming like a star in the most splendid court of Europe. And then
+there comes to us the reverse of the picture. We see her despised,
+insulted, and made the butt of brutal men and still more fiendish
+women; until at last the hideous tumbrel conveys her to the guillotine,
+where her head is severed from her body and her corpse is cast down
+into a bloody pool.
+
+In these two pictures our emotions are played upon in turn--admiration,
+reverence, devotion, and then pity, indignation, and the shudderings of
+horror.
+
+Probably in our own country and in England this will remain the
+historic Marie Antoinette. Whatever the impartial historian may write,
+he can never induce the people at large to understand that this queen
+was far from queenly, that the popular idea of her is almost wholly
+false, and that both in her domestic life and as the greatest lady in
+France she did much to bring on the terrors of that revolution which
+swept her to the guillotine.
+
+In the first place, it is mere fiction that represents Maria Antoinette
+as having been physically beautiful. The painters and engravers have so
+idealized her face as in most cases to have produced a purely imaginary
+portrait.
+
+She was born in Vienna, in 1755, the daughter of the Emperor Francis
+and of that warrior-queen, Maria Theresa. She was a very German-looking
+child. Lady Jackson describes her as having a long, thin face, small,
+pig-like eyes, a pinched-up mouth, with the heavy Hapsburg lip, and
+with a somewhat misshapen form, so that for years she had to be
+bandaged tightly to give her a more natural figure.
+
+At fourteen, when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne,
+she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction
+whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her
+many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in
+French territory.
+
+We must recall for a moment the conditions which prevailed in France.
+King Louis XV. was nearing his end. He was a man of the most shameless
+life; yet he had concealed or gilded his infamies by an external
+dignity and magnificence which, were very pleasing to his people. The
+French, liked to think that their king was the most splendid monarch
+and the greatest gentleman in Europe. The courtiers about him might be
+vile beneath the surface, yet they were compelled to deport themselves
+with the form and the etiquette that had become traditional in France.
+They might be panders, or stock-jobbers, or sellers of political
+offices; yet they must none the less have wit and grace and outward
+nobility of manner.
+
+There was also a tradition regarding the French queen. However loose in
+character the other women of the court might be, she alone, like
+Caesar's wife, must remain above suspicion. She must be purer than the
+pure. No breath, of scandal must reach her or be directed against her.
+
+In this way the French court, even under so dissolute a monarch as
+Louis XV., maintained its hold upon the loyalty of the people. Crowds
+came every morning to view the king in his bed before he arose; the
+same crowds watched him as he was dressed by the gentlemen of the
+bedchamber, and as he breakfasted and went through all the functions
+which are usually private. The King of France must be a great actor. He
+must appear to his people as in reality a king-stately, dignified, and
+beyond all other human beings in his remarkable presence.
+
+When the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette came to the French court King
+Louis XV. kept up in the case the same semblance of austerity. He
+forbade these children to have their sleeping-apartments together. He
+tried to teach them that if they were to govern as well as to reign
+they must conform to the rigid etiquette of Paris and Versailles.
+
+It proved a difficult task, however. The little German princess had no
+natural dignity, though she came from a court where the very strictest
+imperial discipline prevailed. Marie Antoinette found that she could
+have her own way in many things, and she chose to enjoy life without
+regard to ceremony. Her escapades at first would have been thought mild
+enough had she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to
+shock the old French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own
+imperial mother, Maria Theresa.
+
+When a report of the young girl's conduct was brought to her the
+empress was at first mute with indignation. Then she cried out:
+
+"Can this girl be a child of mine? She surely must be a changeling!"
+
+The Austrian ambassador to France was instructed to warn the Dauphiness
+to be more discreet.
+
+"Tell her," said Maria Theresa, "that she will lose her throne, and
+even her life, unless she shows more prudence."
+
+But advice and remonstrance were of no avail. Perhaps they might have
+been had her husband possessed a stronger character; but the young
+Louis was little more fitted to be a king than was his wife to be a
+queen. Dull of perception and indifferent to affairs of state, he had
+only two interests that absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and
+the other was his desire to shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith
+shop, where he could hammer away at the anvil, blow the bellows, and
+manufacture small trifles of mechanical inventions. From this smudgy
+den he would emerge, sooty and greasy, an object of distaste to his
+frivolous princess, with her foamy laces and perfumes and pervasive
+daintiness.
+
+It was hinted in many quarters, and it has been many times repeated,
+that Louis was lacking in virility. Certainly he had no interest in the
+society of women and was wholly continent. But this charge of physical
+incapacity seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made
+against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon
+the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal
+personage was openly licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by
+the people as a weakling.
+
+And so poor Louis XVI., as he came to be, was treated with a mixture of
+pity and contempt because he loved to hammer and mend locks in his
+smithy or shoot game when he might have been caressing ladies who would
+have been proud to have him choose them out.
+
+On the other hand, because of this opinion regarding Louis, people were
+the more suspicious of Marie Antoinette. Some of them, in coarse
+language, criticized her assumed infidelities; others, with a polite
+sneer, affected to defend her. But the result of it all was dangerous
+to both, especially as France was already verging toward the deluge
+which Louis XV. had cynically predicted would follow after him.
+
+In fact, the end came sooner than any one had guessed. Louis XV., who
+had become hopelessly and helplessly infatuated with the low-born
+Jeanne du Barry, was stricken down with smallpox of the most virulent
+type. For many days he lay in his gorgeous bed. Courtiers crowded his
+sick-room and the adjacent hall, longing for the moment when the breath
+would leave his body. He had lived an evil life, and he was to die a
+loathsome death; yet he had borne himself before men as a stately
+monarch. Though his people had suffered in a thousand ways from his
+misgovernment, he was still Louis the Well Beloved, and they blamed his
+ministers of state for all the shocking wrongs that France had felt.
+
+The abler men, and some of the leaders of the people, however, looked
+forward to the accession of Louis XVI. He at least was frugal in his
+habits and almost plebeian in his tastes, and seemed to be one who
+would reduce the enormous taxes that had been levied upon France.
+
+The moment came when the Well Beloved died. His death-room was fetid
+with disease, and even the long corridors of the palace reeked with
+infection, while the motley mob of men and women, clad in silks and
+satins and glittering with jewels, hurried from the spot to pay their
+homage to the new Louis, who was spoken of as "the Desired." The body
+of the late monarch was hastily thrown into a mass of quick-lime, and
+was driven away in a humble wagon, without guards and with no salute,
+save from a single veteran, who remembered the glories of Fontenoy and
+discharged his musket as the royal corpse was carried through the
+palace gates.
+
+This was a critical moment in the history of France; but we have to
+consider it only as a critical moment in the history of Marie
+Antoinette. She was now queen. She had it in her power to restore to
+the French court its old-time grandeur, and, so far as the queen was
+concerned, its purity. Above all, being a foreigner, she should have
+kept herself free from reproach and above every shadow of suspicion.
+
+But here again the indifference of the king undoubtedly played a
+strange part in her life. Had he borne himself as her lord and master
+she might have respected him. Had he shown her the affection of a
+husband she might have loved him. But he was neither imposing, nor, on
+the other hand, was he alluring. She wrote very frankly about him in a
+letter to the Count Orsini:
+
+My tastes are not the same as those of the king, who cares only for
+hunting and blacksmith work. You will admit that I should not show to
+advantage in a forge. I could not appear there as Vulcan, and the part
+of Venus might displease him even more than my tastes.
+
+Thus on the one side is a woman in the first bloom of youth, ardent,
+eager--and neglected. On the other side is her husband, whose
+sluggishness may be judged by quoting from a diary which he kept during
+the month in which he was married. Here is a part of it:
+
+Sunday, 13--Left Versailles. Supper and slept at Compignee, at the
+house of M. de Saint-Florentin.
+
+Monday, 14--Interview with Mme. la Dauphine.
+
+Tuesday, 15--Supped at La Muette. Slept at Versailles.
+
+Wednesday, 16--My marriage. Apartment in the gallery. Royal banquet in
+the Salle d'Opera.
+
+Thursday, 17--Opera of "Perseus."
+
+Friday, 18--Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one.
+
+Saturday, 19--Dress-ball in the Salle d'Opera. Fireworks.
+
+Thursday, 31--I had an indigestion.
+
+What might have been expected from a young girl placed as this queen
+was placed? She was indeed an earlier Eugenie. The first was of royal
+blood, the second was almost a plebeian; but each was headstrong,
+pleasure-loving, and with no real domestic ties. As Mr. Kipling
+expresses it--
+
+    The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
+    Are sisters under their skins;
+
+and so the Austrian woman of 1776 and the Spanish woman of 1856 found
+amusement in very similar ways. They plunged into a sea of strange
+frivolity, such as one finds to-day at the centers of high fashion.
+Marie Antoinette bedecked herself with eccentric garments. On her head
+she wore a hat styled a "what-is-it," towering many feet in height and
+flaunting parti-colored plumes. Worse than all this, she refused to
+wear corsets, and at some great functions she would appear in what
+looked exactly like a bedroom gown.
+
+She would even neglect the ordinary niceties of life. Her hands were
+not well cared for. It was very difficult for the ladies in attendance
+to persuade her to brush her teeth with regularity. Again, she would
+persist in wearing her frilled and lace-trimmed petticoats long after
+their dainty edges had been smirched and blackened.
+
+Yet these things might have been counteracted had she gone no further.
+Unfortunately, she did go further. She loved to dress at night like a
+shop-girl and venture out into the world of Paris, where she was
+frequently followed and recognized. Think of it--the Queen of France,
+elbowed in dense crowds and seeking to attract the attention of common
+soldiers!
+
+Of course, almost every one put the worst construction upon this, and
+after a time upon everything she did. When she took a fancy for
+constructing labyrinths and secret passages in the palace, all Paris
+vowed that she was planning means by which her various lovers might
+enter without observation. The hidden printing-presses of Paris swarmed
+with gross lampoons about this reckless girl; and, although there was
+little truth in what they said, there was enough to cloud her
+reputation. When she fell ill with the measles she was attended in her
+sick-chamber by four gentlemen of the court. The king was forbidden to
+enter lest he might catch the childish disorder.
+
+The apathy of the king, indeed, drove her into many a folly. After four
+years of marriage, as Mrs. Mayne records, he had only reached the point
+of giving her a chilly kiss. The fact that she had no children became a
+serious matter. Her brother, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, when he
+visited Paris, ventured to speak to the king upon the subject. Even the
+Austrian ambassador had thrown out hints that the house of Bourbon
+needed direct heirs. Louis grunted and said little, but he must have
+known how good was the advice.
+
+It was at about this time when there came to the French court a young
+Swede named Axel de Fersen, who bore the title of count, but who was
+received less for his rank than for his winning manner, his knightly
+bearing, and his handsome, sympathetic face. Romantic in spirit, he
+threw himself at once into a silent inner worship of Marie Antoinette,
+who had for him a singular attraction. Wherever he could meet her they
+met. To her growing cynicism this breath of pure yet ardent affection
+was very grateful. It came as something fresh and sweet into the
+feverish life she led.
+
+Other men had had the audacity to woo her--among them Duc de Lauzun,
+whose complicity in the famous affair of the diamond necklace afterward
+cast her, though innocent, into ruin; the Duc de Biron; and the Baron
+de Besenval, who had obtained much influence over her, which he used
+for the most evil purposes. Besenval tainted her mind by persuading her
+to read indecent books, in the hope that at last she would become his
+prey.
+
+But none of these men ever meant to Marie Antoinette what Fersen meant.
+Though less than twenty years of age, he maintained the reserve of a
+great gentleman, and never forced himself upon her notice. Yet their
+first acquaintance had occurred in such a way as to give to it a touch
+of intimacy. He had gone to a masked ball, and there had chosen for his
+partner a lady whose face was quite concealed. Something drew the two
+together. The gaiety of the woman and the chivalry of the man blended
+most harmoniously. It was only afterward that he discovered that his
+chance partner was the first lady in France. She kept his memory in her
+mind; for some time later, when he was at a royal drawing-room and she
+heard his voice, she exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, an old acquaintance!"
+
+From this time Fersen was among those who were most intimately favored
+by the queen. He had the privilege of attending her private receptions
+at the palace of the Trianon, and was a conspicuous figure at the
+feasts given in the queen's honor by the Princess de Lamballe, a
+beautiful girl whose head was destined afterward to be severed from her
+body and borne upon a bloody pike through the streets of Paris. But as
+yet the deluge had not arrived and the great and noble still danced
+upon the brink of a volcano.
+
+Fersen grew more and more infatuated, nor could he quite conceal his
+feelings. The queen, in her turn, was neither frightened nor indignant.
+His passion, so profound and yet so respectful, deeply moved her. Then
+came a time when the truth was made clear to both of them. Fersen was
+near her while she was singing to the harpsichord, and "she was
+betrayed by her own music into an avowal which song made easy." She
+forgot that she was Queen of France. She only felt that her womanhood
+had been starved and slighted, and that here was a noble-minded lover
+of whom she could be proud.
+
+Some time after this announcement was officially made of the
+approaching accouchement of the queen. It was impossible that malicious
+tongues should be silent. The king's brother, the Comte de Provence,
+who hated the queen, just as the Bonapartes afterward hated Josephine,
+did his best to besmirch her reputation. He had, indeed, the
+extraordinary insolence to do so at a time when one would suppose that
+the vilest of men would remain silent. The child proved to be a
+princess, and she afterward received the title of Duchesse d'Angouleme.
+The King of Spain asked to be her godfather at the christening, which
+was to be held in the cathedral of Notre Dame. The Spanish king was not
+present in person, but asked the Comte de Provence to act as his proxy.
+
+On the appointed day the royal party proceeded to the cathedral, and
+the Comte de Provence presented the little child at the baptismal font.
+The grand almoner, who presided, asked;
+
+"What name shall be given to this child?"
+
+The Comte de Provence answered in a sneering tone:
+
+"Oh, we don't begin with that. The first thing to find out is who the
+father and the mother are!"
+
+These words, spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a
+strongly sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled
+innuendo that the father of the child was not the King of France. Those
+about the court immediately began to look at Fersen with significant
+smiles. The queen would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared
+even more for her good name than for his love of her. It would have
+been so easy to remain in the full enjoyment of his conquest; but he
+was too chivalrous for that, or, rather, he knew that the various
+ambassadors in Paris had told their respective governments of the
+rising scandal. In fact, the following secret despatch was sent to the
+King of Sweden by his envoy:
+
+I must confide to your majesty that the young Count Fersen has been so
+well received by the queen that various persons have taken it amiss. I
+own that I am sure that she has a liking for him. I have seen proofs of
+it too certain to be doubted. During the last few days the queen has
+not taken her eyes off him, and as she gazed they were full of tears. I
+beg your majesty to keep their secret to yourself.
+
+The queen wept because Fersen had resolved to leave her lest she should
+be exposed to further gossip. If he left her without any apparent
+reason, the gossip would only be the more intense. Therefore he decided
+to join the French troops who were going to America to fight under
+Lafayette. A brilliant but dissolute duchess taunted him when the news
+became known.
+
+"How is this?" said she. "Do you forsake your conquest?"
+
+But, "lying like a gentleman," Fersen answered, quietly:
+
+"Had I made a conquest I should not forsake it. I go away free, and,
+unfortunately, without leaving any regret."
+
+Nothing could have been more chivalrous than the pains which Fersen
+took to shield the reputation of the queen. He even allowed it to be
+supposed that he was planning a marriage with a rich young Swedish
+woman who had been naturalized in England. As a matter of fact, he
+departed for America, and not very long afterward the young woman in
+question married an Englishman.
+
+Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
+three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted to
+the order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was
+received with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish
+regiment.
+
+The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic
+and appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did
+what he could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her
+to maintain an imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise
+have lacked. He faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries.
+Lafayette tried to make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was
+jeered at for his pains. Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The
+least insulting name which they could give him was "a fat pig." As for
+the queen, the most filthy phrases were showered upon her by the men,
+and even more so by the women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought
+her life.
+
+At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
+children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
+Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure.
+Every one remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes.
+The royal party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted
+with insolent additions:
+
+"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
+Now we shall have bread!"
+
+Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
+Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and
+day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described
+by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were
+practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through
+horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his
+so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The
+queen dragged out a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever
+under the eyes of human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and
+jeered at her at times when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last,
+she mounted the scaffold, and her head, with its shining hair, fell
+into the bloody basket.
+
+Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
+girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As
+a queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity which recalled the
+dignity of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in
+love when she met a man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most
+part like a mere cocotte. She died every inch a queen.
+
+One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette
+and that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty
+years. She died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace
+in Paris; he was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of
+Stockholm. The day of his death was the anniversary of the flight to
+Varennes. To the last moment of his existence he remained faithful to
+the memory of the royal woman who had given herself so utterly to him.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF AARON BURR
+
+
+There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared from
+the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public
+estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel
+in 1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the
+white light of history shall have searched them both they will appear
+as two remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the
+same time his equally undoubted virtues.
+
+Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other--Burr being a
+grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the
+illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of
+them was short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical
+endurance, courage, and impressive personality. Each as a young man
+served on the staff of Washington during the Revolutionary War, and
+each of them quarreled with him, though in a different way.
+
+On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of
+looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington
+leaped to his feet with the exclamation:
+
+"How dare you, Colonel Burr?"
+
+Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:
+
+"Colonel Burr DARE do anything."
+
+This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's
+difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious
+quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury
+and took no part in the war until the end, when he was present at the
+battle of Yorktown.
+
+Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of
+Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was
+shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr
+showed himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high,
+but Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of
+musket-balls and grape-shot.
+
+Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a
+shattered, feeble thing." He could never obtain an elective office, and
+he would have preferred to see the United States transformed into a
+kingdom. Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton
+Secretary of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his
+military service until the war was ended, routing the enemy at
+Hackensack, enduring the horrors of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade
+at the battle of Monmouth, and heading the defense of the city of New
+Haven. He was also attorney-general of New York, was elected to the
+United States Senate, was tied with Jefferson for the Presidency, and
+then became Vice-President.
+
+Both Hamilton and Burr were effective speakers; but, while Hamilton was
+wordy and diffuse, Burr spoke always to the point, with clear and
+cogent reasoning. Both were lavish spenders of money, and both were
+engaged in duels before the fatal one in which Hamilton fell. Both
+believed in dueling as the only way of settling an affair of honor.
+Neither of them was averse to love affairs, though it may be said that
+Hamilton sought women, while Burr was rather sought by women. When
+Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was obliged to confess an
+adulterous amour in order to save himself from the charge of corrupt
+practices in public office. So long as Burr's wife lived he was a
+devoted, faithful husband to her. Hamilton was obliged to confess his
+illicit acts while his wife, formerly Miss Elizabeth Schuyler, was
+living. She spent her later years in buying and destroying the
+compromising documents which her husband had published for his
+countrymen to read.
+
+The most extraordinary thing about Aaron Burr was the magnetic quality
+that was felt by every one who approached him. The roots of this
+penetrated down into a deep vitality. He was always young, always
+alert, polished in manner, courageous with that sort of courage which
+does not even recognize the presence of danger, charming in
+conversation, and able to adapt it to men or women of any age whatever.
+His hair was still dark in his eightieth year. His step was still
+elastic, his motions were still as spontaneous and energetic, as those
+of a youth.
+
+So it was that every one who knew him experienced his fascination. The
+rough troops whom he led through the Canadian swamps felt the iron hand
+of his discipline; yet they were devoted to him, since he shared all
+their toils, faced all their dangers, and ate with them the scraps of
+hide which they gnawed to keep the breath of life in their shrunken
+bodies.
+
+Burr's discipline was indeed very strict, so that at first raw recruits
+rebelled against it. On one occasion the men of an untrained company
+resented it so bitterly that they decided to shoot Colonel Burr as he
+paraded them for roll-call that evening. Burr somehow got word of it
+and contrived to have all the cartridges drawn from their muskets. When
+the time for the roll-call came one of the malcontents leaped from the
+front line and leveled his weapon at Burr.
+
+"Now is the time, boys!" he shouted.
+
+Like lightning Burr's sword flashed from its scabbard with such a
+vigorous stroke as to cut the man's arm completely off and partly to
+cleave the musket.
+
+"Take your place in the ranks," said Burr.
+
+The mutineer obeyed, dripping with blood. A month later every man in
+that company was devoted to his commander. They had learned that
+discipline was the surest source of safety.
+
+But with this high spirit and readiness to fight Burr had a most
+pleasing way of meeting every one who came to him. When he was arrested
+in the Western forests, charged with high treason, the sound of his
+voice won from jury after jury verdicts of acquittal. Often the
+sheriffs would not arrest him. One grand jury not merely exonerated him
+from all public misdemeanors, but brought in a strong presentment
+against the officers of the government for molesting him.
+
+It was the same everywhere. Burr made friends and devoted allies among
+all sorts of men. During his stay in France, England, Germany, and
+Sweden he interested such men as Charles Lamb, Jeremy Bentham, Sir
+Walter Scott, Goethe, and Heeren. They found his mind able to meet with
+theirs on equal terms. Burr, indeed, had graduated as a youth with
+honors from Princeton, and had continued his studies there after
+graduation, which was then a most unusual thing to do. But, of course,
+he learned most from his contact with men and women of the world.
+
+Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in The Minister's Wooing, has given what is
+probably an exact likeness of Aaron Burr, with his brilliant gifts and
+some of his defects. It is strong testimony to the character of Burr
+that Mrs. Stowe set out to paint him as a villain; but before she had
+written long she felt his fascination and made her readers, in their
+own despite, admirers of this remarkable man. There are many parallels,
+indeed, between him and Napoleon--in the quickness of his intellect,
+the ready use of his resources, and his power over men, while he was
+more than Napoleon in his delightful gift of conversation and the easy
+play of his cultured mind.
+
+Those who are full of charm are willing also to be charmed. All his
+life Burr was abstemious in food and drink. His tastes were most
+refined. It is difficult to believe that such a man could have been an
+unmitigated profligate.
+
+In his twentieth year there seems to have begun the first of the
+romances that run through the story of his long career. Perhaps one
+ought not to call it the first romance, for at eighteen, while he was
+studying law at Litchfield, a girl, whose name has been suppressed,
+made an open avowal of love for him. Almost at the same time an heiress
+with a large fortune would have married him had he been willing to
+accept her hand. But at this period he was only a boy and did not take
+such things seriously.
+
+Two years later, after Burr had seen hard service at Quebec and on
+Manhattan Island, his name was associated with that of a very beautiful
+girl named Margaret Moncrieffe. She was the daughter of a British
+major, but in some way she had been captured while within the American
+lines. Her captivity was regarded as little more than a joke; but while
+she was thus a prisoner she saw a great deal of Burr. For several
+months they were comrades, after which General Putnam sent her with his
+compliments to her father.
+
+Margaret Moncrieffe had a most emotional nature. There can be no doubt
+that she deeply loved the handsome young American officer, whom she
+never saw again. It is doubtful how far their intimacy was carried.
+Later she married a Mr. Coghlan. After reaching middle life she wrote
+of Burr in a way which shows that neither years nor the obligations of
+marriage could make her forget that young soldier, whom she speaks of
+as "the conqueror of her soul." In the rather florid style of those
+days the once youthful Margaret Moncrieffe expresses herself as follows:
+
+Oh, may these pages one day meet the eye of him who subdued my virgin
+heart, whom the immutable, unerring laws of nature had pointed out for
+my husband, but whose sacred decree the barbarous customs of society
+fatally violated!
+
+Commenting on this paragraph, Mr. H. C. Merwin justly remarks that,
+whatever may have been Burr's conduct toward Margaret Moncrieffe, the
+lady herself, who was the person chiefly concerned, had no complaint to
+make of it. It certainly was no very serious affair, since in the
+following year Burr met a lady who, while she lived, was the only woman
+for whom he ever really cared.
+
+This was Theodosia Prevost, the wife of a major in the British army.
+Burr met her first in 1777, while she was living with her sister in
+Westchester County. Burr's command was fifteen miles across the river,
+but distance and danger made no difference to him. He used to mount a
+swift horse, inspect his sentinels and outposts, and then gallop to the
+Hudson, where a barge rowed by six soldiers awaited him. The barge was
+well supplied with buffalo-skins, upon which the horse was thrown with
+his legs bound, and then half an hour's rowing brought them to the
+other side. There Burr resumed his horse, galloped to the house of Mrs.
+Prevost, and, after spending a few hours with her, returned in the same
+way.
+
+Mrs. Prevost was by no means beautiful, but she had an attractiveness
+of her own. She was well educated and possessed charming manners, with
+a disposition both gentle and affectionate. Her husband died soon after
+the beginning of the war, and then Burr married her. No more ideal
+family life could be conceived than his, and the letters which passed
+between the two are full of adoration. Thus she wrote to him:
+
+Tell me, why do I grow every day more tenacious of your regard? Is it
+because each revolving day proves you more deserving?
+
+And thus Burr answered her:
+
+Continue to multiply your letters to me. They are all my solace. The
+last six are constantly within my reach. I read them once a day at
+least. Write me all that I have asked, and a hundred things which I
+have not.
+
+When it is remembered that these letters were written after nine years
+of marriage it is hard to believe all the evil things that have been
+said of Burr.
+
+His wife died in 1794, and he then gave a double affection to his
+daughter Theodosia, whose beauty and accomplishments were known
+throughout the country. Burr took the greatest pains in her education,
+and believed that she should be trained, as he had been, to be brave,
+industrious, and patient. He himself, who has been described as a
+voluptuary, delighted in the endurance of cold and heat and of severe
+labor.
+
+After his death one of his younger admirers was asked what Burr had
+done for him. The reply was characteristic.
+
+"He made me iron," was the answer.
+
+No father ever gave more attention to his daughter's welfare. As to
+Theodosia's studies he was very strict, making her read Greek and Latin
+every day, with drawing and music and history, in addition to French.
+Not long before her marriage to Joseph Allston, of South Carolina, Burr
+wrote to her:
+
+I really think, my dear Theo, that you will be very soon beyond all
+verbal criticism, and that my whole attention will be presently
+directed to the improvement of your style.
+
+Theodosia Burr married into a family of good old English stock, where
+riches were abundant, and high character was regarded as the best of
+all possessions. Every one has heard of the mysterious tragedy which is
+associated with her history. In 1812, when her husband had been elected
+Governor of his state, her only child--a sturdy boy of eleven--died,
+and Theodosia's health was shattered by her sorrow. In the same year
+Burr returned from a sojourn in Europe, and his loving daughter
+embarked from Charleston on a schooner, the Patriot, to meet her father
+in New York. When Burr arrived he was met by a letter which told him
+that his grandson was dead and that Theodosia was coming to him.
+
+Weeks sped by, and no news was heard of the ill-fated Patriot. At last
+it became evident that she must have gone down or in some other way
+have been lost. Burr and Governor Allston wrote to each other letter
+after letter, of which each one seems to surpass the agony of the
+other. At last all hope was given up. Governor Allston died soon after
+of a broken heart; but Burr, as became a Stoic, acted otherwise.
+
+He concealed everything that reminded him of Theodosia. He never spoke
+of his lost daughter. His grief was too deep-seated and too terrible
+for speech. Only once did he ever allude to her, and this was in a
+letter written to an afflicted friend, which contained the words:
+
+Ever since the event which separated me from mankind I have been able
+neither to give nor to receive consolation.
+
+In time the crew of a pirate vessel was captured and sentenced to be
+hanged. One of the men, who seemed to be less brutal than the rest,
+told how, in 1812, they had captured a schooner, and, after their usual
+practice, had compelled the passengers to walk the plank. All hesitated
+and showed cowardice, except only one--a beautiful woman whose eyes
+were as bright and whose bearing was as unconcerned as if she were safe
+on shore. She quickly led the way, and, mounting the plank with a
+certain scorn of death, said to the others:
+
+"Come, I will show you how to die."
+
+It has always been supposed that this intrepid girl may have been
+Theodosia Allston. If so, she only acted as her father would have done
+and in strict accordance with his teachings.
+
+This resolute courage, this stern joy in danger, this perfect
+equanimity, made Burr especially attractive to women, who love courage,
+the more so when it is coupled with gentleness and generosity.
+
+Perhaps no man in our country has been so vehemently accused regarding
+his relations with the other sex. The most improbable stories were told
+about him, even by his friends. As to his enemies, they took boundless
+pains to paint him in the blackest colors. According to them, no woman
+was safe from his intrigues. He was a perfect devil in leading them
+astray and then casting them aside.
+
+Thus one Matthew L. Davis, in whom Burr had confided as a friend, wrote
+of him long afterward a most unjust account--unjust because we have
+proofs that it was false in the intensity of its abuse. Davis wrote:
+
+It is truly surprising how any individual could become so eminent as a
+soldier, as a statesman, and as a professional man who devoted so much
+time to the other sex as was devoted by Colonel Burr. For more than
+half a century of his life they seemed to absorb his whole thought. His
+intrigues were without number; the sacred bonds of friendship were
+unhesitatingly violated when they operated as barriers to the
+indulgence of his passions. In this particular Burr appears to have
+been unfeeling and heartless.
+
+It is impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one
+of incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well
+known, should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of
+immorality is so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has
+been flung promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in
+our own country.
+
+Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when Gladstone
+was more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a question
+of a woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London clubs
+were humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that this aged
+and austere old gentleman was not above seeking common street amours.
+
+And so with Aaron Burr to a great extent. That he was a man of strict
+morality it would be absurd to maintain. That he was a reckless and
+licentious profligate would be almost equally untrue. Mr. H. O. Merwin
+has very truly said:
+
+Part of Burr's reputation for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that
+vanity respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused
+to accept the parentage of a child.
+
+"Why do you allow this woman to saddle you with her child when you KNOW
+you are not the father of it?" said a friend to him a few months before
+his death.
+
+"Sir," he replied, "when a lady does me the honor to name me the father
+of her child I trust I shall always be too gallant to show myself
+ungrateful for the favor."
+
+There are two curious legends relating to Aaron Burr. They serve to
+show that his reputation became such that he could not enjoy the
+society of a woman without having her regarded as his mistress.
+
+When he was United States Senator from New York he lived in
+Philadelphia at the lodging-house of a Mrs. Payne, whose daughter,
+Dorothy Todd, was the very youthful widow of an officer. This young
+woman was rather free in her manners, and Burr was very responsive in
+his. At the time, however, nothing was thought of it; but presently
+Burr brought to the house the serious and somewhat pedantic James
+Madison and introduced him to the hoyden.
+
+Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but
+gradually rising to a prominent position in politics--"the great little
+Madison," as Burr rather lightly called him. Before very long he had
+proposed marriage to the young widow. She hesitated, and some one
+referred the matter to President Washington. The Father of his Country
+answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the
+subject of matrimony. It is worth preserving because it shows that he
+had a sense of humor:
+
+For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice
+to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage ... A woman very
+rarely asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her
+mind is wholly made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation of
+obtaining a sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your
+disapproval.
+
+Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish ways
+was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her old
+association with Burr. At once the story sprang to light that Burr had
+been her lover and that he had brought about the match with Madison as
+an easy way of getting rid of her.
+
+There is another curious story which makes Martin Van Buren, eighth
+President of the United States, to have been the illegitimate son of
+Aaron Burr. There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that
+Burr sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was
+kept by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life
+showed an astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he
+was called by his opponents "the fox of Kinderhook." But, as Van Buren
+was born in December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married
+to Theodosia Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember,
+as we must, the ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only
+before their marriage, but afterward until her death.
+
+Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited
+by Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster,
+found a great attraction in the society of women; that he could please
+them and fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during his
+later life he must be held quite culpable in this respect. His
+love-making was ardent and rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case
+of his second marriage.
+
+Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he
+once took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only
+other occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply
+hated Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had
+reached Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and
+when the coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily
+became his mistress.
+
+It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his
+intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may
+be held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does
+it exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women
+of the world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when
+otherwise he might never have thought of them.
+
+That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him
+may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and
+reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a
+will in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the
+same time he wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:
+
+If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ----,
+too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my
+recollection. She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.
+
+Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the
+course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters
+written by aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he
+had never burned. Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man
+who loved love for its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge
+iron-clamped chest, and he instructed Theodosia in case he should die
+to burn every letter which might injure any one.
+
+After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.
+Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a
+means of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed
+them unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of
+the man who trusted him as a friend.
+
+Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years.
+His last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating
+because it has often been misunderstood.
+
+Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age eloped
+with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband died
+while she was still quite young, and she then married a French
+wine-merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man
+of much vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in
+New York, owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall
+he and his wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the
+salons by her vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.
+
+Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme. Jumel
+returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture and
+paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing
+in the upper part of Manhattan Island--a mansion held by her in her own
+right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel
+returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.
+
+Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he
+died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not
+very much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal
+advice, and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr. She
+had known him a good many years before; and, though he was now
+seventy-eight years of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He
+was still courtly in manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically
+he was straight, active, and vigorous.
+
+A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed
+all his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead
+her in to dinner, he said:
+
+"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours."
+
+These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and finally
+proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less
+flattered, she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to
+discourage a man like Aaron Burr.
+
+"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a
+clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it."
+
+This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather
+liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the
+leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's
+mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married
+him to his first wife fifty years before.
+
+Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a
+strong one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The
+great house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's
+advice. Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination.
+Therefore she arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris
+gowns; the members of her household and eight servants were called in
+and the ceremony was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed.
+A dozen cobwebbed bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and
+the marriage feast went on merrily until after midnight.
+
+This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was
+strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections
+of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of
+the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another
+woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was
+told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early
+part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a
+new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge
+to be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.
+
+The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very
+long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state
+Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge
+over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they
+brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the
+investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in
+a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out
+to be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the
+more so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had
+been engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.
+
+She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One
+day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was
+surprised to see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open
+carriage. He came out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to
+find her in a violent temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each
+cushion at her side.
+
+"What do you wish, madam?" said he, rather mildly.
+
+"What do I wish?" she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr!"
+
+Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end
+they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.
+When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into a
+flood of tears--another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr
+exercised through all his checkered life.
+
+It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral
+character of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of
+recklessness. As a political leader he was almost the equal of
+Jefferson and quite superior to Hamilton. As a man of the world he was
+highly accomplished, polished in manner, charming in conversation. He
+made friends easily, and he forgave his enemies with a broadmindedness
+that is unusual.
+
+On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of
+insincerity, and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too
+often to the injury of those women who could not resist his insinuating
+ways and the caressing notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in
+his youth, he was devoted, affectionate, and loyal; while as a father
+he was little less than worshiped by the daughter whom he reared so
+carefully.
+
+One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has
+been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and
+such a daughter as Burr had.
+
+When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias be
+summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an
+affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or
+romance. Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some
+degree, even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven
+itself.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
+
+
+In the last decade of the eighteenth century England was perhaps the
+most brilliant nation of the world. Other countries had been humbled by
+the splendid armies of France and were destined to be still further
+humbled by the emperor who came from Corsica. France had begun to seize
+the scepter of power; yet to this picture there was another
+side--fearful want and grievous poverty and the horrors of the
+Revolution. Russia was too far away, and was still considered too
+barbarous, for a brilliant court to flourish there. Prussia had the
+prestige that Frederick the Great won for her, but she was still a
+comparatively small state. Italy was in a condition of political chaos;
+the banks of the Rhine were running blood where the Austrian armies
+faced the gallant Frenchmen under the leadership of Moreau. But
+England, in spite of the loss of her American colonies, was rich and
+prosperous, and her invincible fleets were extending her empire over
+the seven seas.
+
+At no time in modern England has the court at London seen so much real
+splendor or such fine manners. The royalist emigres who fled from
+France brought with them names and pedigrees that were older than the
+Crusades, and many of them were received with the frankest, freest
+English hospitality. If here and there some marquis or baron of ancient
+blood was perforce content to teach music to the daughters of tradesmen
+in suburban schools, nevertheless they were better off than they had
+been in France, harried by the savage gaze-hounds of the guillotine.
+Afterward, in the days of the Restoration, when they came back to their
+estates, they had probably learned more than one lesson from the
+bouledogues of Merry England, who had little tact, perhaps, but who
+were at any rate kindly and willing to share their goods with pinched
+and poverty-stricken foreigners.
+
+The court, then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from
+Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of
+England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental
+condition of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III
+as a dull creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that
+insanity which finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's
+picture of him is absurdly untrue to the actual facts. George III. was
+by no means a dullard, nor was he a sort of beefy country squire who
+roved about the palace gardens with his unattractive spouse.
+
+Obstinate enough he was, and ready for a combat with the rulers of the
+Continent or with his self-willed sons; but he was a man of brains and
+power, and Lord Rosebery has rightly described him as the most striking
+constitutional figure of his time. Had he retained his reason, and had
+his erratic and self-seeking son not succeeded him during his own
+lifetime, Great Britain might very possibly have entered upon other
+ways than those which opened to her after the downfall of Napoleon.
+
+The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III.,
+but rather his son, subsequently George IV., who was made Prince of
+Wales three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during
+the insanity of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the
+fit companion of Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and
+fox-hunters who drank pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman
+of Europe." Others, who knew him better, described him as one who never
+kept his word to man or woman and who lacked the most elementary
+virtues.
+
+Yet it was his good luck during the first years of his regency to be
+popular as few English kings have ever been. To his people he typified
+old England against revolutionary France; and his youth and gaiety made
+many like him. He drank and gambled; he kept packs of hounds and
+strings of horses; he ran deeply into debt that he might patronize the
+sports of that uproarious day. He was a gallant "Corinthian," a haunter
+of dens where there were prize-fights and cock-fights, and there was
+hardly a doubtful resort in London where his face was not familiar.
+
+He was much given to gallantry--not so much, as it seemed, for
+wantonness, but from sheer love of mirth and chivalry. For a time, with
+his chosen friends, such as Fox and Sheridan, he ventured into reckless
+intrigues that recalled the amours of his predecessor, Charles II. He
+had by no means the wit and courage of Charles; and, indeed, the house
+of Hanover lacked the outward show of chivalry which made the Stuarts
+shine with external splendor. But he was good-looking and stalwart, and
+when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume a
+very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in his
+prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep
+drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen
+no less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous
+victories on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true
+achievements were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only
+folly, and his so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented
+buckles, striped waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew
+nothing of the principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is
+governed.
+
+The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first
+to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before
+these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.
+
+One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed
+"Florizel," to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson,
+whose maiden name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous
+portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent,
+and temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic,"
+insisted upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the
+stage trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and
+armed watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took
+this nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for
+the stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would
+never weary of her.
+
+He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such
+a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he
+cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the
+money, he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle
+before she succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince
+had to borrow it and that this obligation formed part of the debts
+which Parliament paid for him.
+
+It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
+They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
+significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife
+so far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it
+illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the
+permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's
+consent might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children
+born of it could not inherit any claim to the throne.
+
+It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was
+strictly enforced. Thus William IV., who succeeded George IV., was
+married, before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy
+Bland). Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was
+known as Queen Adelaide.
+
+There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to be
+born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced to
+give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage
+arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke
+of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the
+regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.
+The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of
+Clarence, later King William IV., was almost too old; and therefore, to
+insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and
+attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready
+for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep
+and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:
+
+"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,
+too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me.
+And what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of
+the Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that
+you have had!"
+
+In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
+he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had
+been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a
+wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington
+Palace, which was assigned as his residence.
+
+Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
+greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of
+fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as head
+of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen
+Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the
+rites of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The
+queen never quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes,
+though the duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs.
+FitzGeorge--was received almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold
+high rank in the British army and navy, respectively.
+
+The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells
+of his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any
+king. This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who
+was six years older than the young prince when she first met him in
+company with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.
+
+Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
+advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had
+already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the
+advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,
+and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be
+illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince
+was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne
+if he could but win her.
+
+His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:
+
+"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the
+succession to the throne."
+
+"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let
+my brother have it, and that I should live as a private English
+gentleman."
+
+Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily
+to a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince
+George too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of
+another faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who
+was always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot
+haste to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he
+begged to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act.
+The lady yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence;
+but she was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire,
+who was a reigning beauty of the court.
+
+The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive.--The
+prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles
+blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken
+wooer, vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab
+himself again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the
+duchess, were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while
+Lady Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also
+acknowledged it in a document.
+
+Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after
+this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
+recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So she
+sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to the
+Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives
+followed her steps for a year.
+
+At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince in
+such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of
+morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed
+"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the
+officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives."
+
+Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
+Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,
+and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded
+as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one
+occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in
+order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by
+the Treasury.
+
+George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
+he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search
+of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"
+of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he
+found it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much
+because of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert
+had previously lived there.
+
+However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
+arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the
+spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began
+to be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice
+that was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing
+at Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.
+
+At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
+accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
+arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
+The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,
+partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade
+of the Steyne.
+
+During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
+was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
+London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
+were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly
+called "London by the Sea." There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;
+statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a
+very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,
+to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;
+and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her
+brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's
+friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.
+
+Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
+serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
+quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was
+most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently
+entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was
+a decorous one.
+
+No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
+so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
+addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince." The old king and his wife,
+however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly
+due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had
+received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at
+the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the
+prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million
+pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were
+set against him.
+
+Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
+there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had
+no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified
+positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.
+Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance some
+utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged
+descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
+
+Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at
+Brighton. In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of
+the Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said
+that she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut
+off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen
+objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be
+reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a
+morganatic state of marriage.
+
+At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
+large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,
+and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of
+the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after
+his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.
+With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With
+Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.
+
+Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he
+took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered
+to one of his friends:
+
+"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy!"
+
+Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
+could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she
+did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.
+
+We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
+neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one of
+open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
+kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
+George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,
+while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her
+attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,
+sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort
+of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his
+furious German wife.
+
+Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the
+moonlight on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or,
+better still, when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the
+gentle woman who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of
+Brunswick was thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house
+within sight of Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like
+screeches to the mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in
+August, 1821, only a month after the coronation, she died, and her body
+was taken back to Brunswick for burial.
+
+George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
+executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
+king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care
+every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last
+illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said
+George "read eagerly." Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her
+letters; but he would do so only in return for those which he had
+written to her.
+
+It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.
+This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,
+the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.
+
+Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
+three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at
+Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and
+flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which
+Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the
+story of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence
+exercised upon him by the affection of a good woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
+
+
+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!"
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG
+
+
+There is one famous woman whom history condems while at the same time
+it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the
+judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress
+of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial
+Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his
+overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba, the
+empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her
+unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that
+is usually remembered of her--that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that
+she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself
+with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for
+years, and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of
+bastards."
+
+Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much
+to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought
+disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,
+French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care to
+dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its
+greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian
+wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare
+fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess,
+her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to
+crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad
+of history ignore it with averted eyes.
+
+In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von
+Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you
+straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does
+it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in
+literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the
+theme in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of
+Thirty."
+
+As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the case,
+giving them in such order that their full significance may be
+understood.
+
+In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself
+free from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of
+his marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she
+had been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life
+together she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her
+from habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the
+wrong which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost
+repulsive. And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and
+without a son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements
+which he had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble
+into nothingness when he should die.
+
+No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition
+leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He
+would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who
+in his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost
+declassee widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he
+might take to himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.
+
+At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander
+entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to
+evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far
+more ancient than the Romanoffs--a family which had held the imperial
+dignity for nearly six centuries--the oldest and the noblest blood in
+Europe. This was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor
+Francis, had thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess
+Marie Louise, was then in her nineteenth year.
+
+Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He
+turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there
+were many reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at
+any rate, ill-omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian
+arch-duchess, Marie Antoinette, married to the ruler of France, had met
+her death upon the scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who
+had always blamed "the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in
+the flames of revolution. Again, the father of the girl to whom
+Napoleon's fancy turned had been the bitter enemy of the new regime in
+France. His troops had been beaten by the French in five wars and had
+been crushed at Austerlitz and at Wagram. Bonaparte had twice entered
+Vienna at the head of a conquering army, and thrice he had slept in the
+imperial palace at Schonbrunn, while Francis was fleeing through the
+dark, a beaten fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons of French
+cavalry.
+
+The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished
+toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor.
+He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood;
+Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished
+thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred
+titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still
+showed the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they
+sprang. Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in
+so many ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of
+Napoleon all the more.
+
+"Impossible?" he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible'
+is not French."
+
+The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite
+possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with
+Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of
+the Hapsburgs to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped
+from Francis province after province. He had even let fall hints that
+the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from
+the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar,
+who was still his ally. It was at this psychological moment that the
+Czar wounded Napoleon's pride by refusing to give the hand of his
+sister Anne.
+
+The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance. Prince
+Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a
+man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a
+fitting bride for the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded
+vanity of Napoleon. From that moment events moved swiftly; and before
+long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France,
+and that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had
+been Napoleon's most persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to
+be given--sacrificed, if you like--to appease an imperial adventurer.
+After such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation. The
+reigning dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.
+
+But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken of
+as a sort of ogre--a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy
+of her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than
+a year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on
+her father. In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a
+coward and a liar. Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to
+her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster,
+outside the pale of human liking and respect. What must have been her
+thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was
+to become the bride of such a being?
+
+Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then
+brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was
+a tall blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face
+which might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so
+gentle, but in which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her
+complexion was rosy, with that peculiar tinge which means that in the
+course of time it will become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear
+and childish. Her figure was good, though already too full for a girl
+who was younger than her years.
+
+She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one being
+the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous--a feature which has
+remained for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg
+blood. One sees it in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen
+Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the
+artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down
+this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was.
+But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen
+who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from
+her discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of
+Napoleon by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had beaten down in battle.
+
+When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her
+girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital
+was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread
+she questioned the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.
+
+"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is our
+friend."
+
+Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl
+she was, yielded her own will.
+
+Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally.
+Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was
+already astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure
+the continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her
+husband. Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:
+
+"This is the first and most important thing--she must have children."
+
+To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter--an odd
+letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor
+of a lover:
+
+MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have
+inspired in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making
+my request to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to
+me the happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will
+understand the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter
+myself that it will not be decided solely by the duty of parental
+obedience? However slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may
+incline to me, I wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to
+endeavor so constantly to please you in everything, that I flatter
+myself that some day I shall prove attractive to you. This is the end
+at which I desire to arrive, and for which I pray your highness to be
+favorable to me.
+
+Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl.
+She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only
+ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a
+necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn
+upon. Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed
+before her eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the
+Parisian shops were spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for
+the princess who was soon to become the bride of the man who had
+mastered continental Europe.
+
+The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would
+show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had
+married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last
+detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and
+presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's
+sister, of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among
+my sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers." Caroline,
+by virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's
+future bride. Also, there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal,
+Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just
+been created Prince of Wagram--a title which, very naturally, he did
+not use in Austria. He was to act as proxy for Napoleon in the
+preliminary marriage service at Vienna.
+
+All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished
+under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations
+and balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's
+interest; and the excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be
+flattered, and yet there were many hours when her heart misgave her.
+More than once she was found in tears. Her father, an affectionate
+though narrow soul, spent an entire day with her consoling and
+reassuring her. One thought she always kept in mind--what she had said
+to Metternich at the very first: "I want only what my duty bids me
+want." At last came the official marriage, by proxy, in the presence of
+a splendid gathering. The various documents were signed, the dowry was
+arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At the opera there
+were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father a sad
+farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with
+tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage,
+while cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful
+peal.
+
+She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled
+with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of
+attendant menials. The young bride--the wife of a man whom she had
+never seen--was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station
+in the outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father,
+which are a commentary upon her state of mind:
+
+I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to
+endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He
+will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my
+duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.
+
+There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl
+going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically
+to the one thought--that whatever might befall her, she was doing as
+her father wished.
+
+One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over
+wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She
+was surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every
+town the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared
+at her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on.
+Each morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great
+cluster of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown
+husband who was to meet her at her journey's end.
+
+There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused--the
+journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
+from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
+happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to
+himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!
+
+What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
+her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
+throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past
+she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was
+fearful with a shuddering fear.
+
+At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed
+into a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was
+Austrian, while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one
+was French. Here she was received by those who were afterward to
+surround her--the representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were
+not all plebeians and children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys,
+ex-laundresses. By this time Napoleon had gathered around himself some
+of the noblest families of France, who had rallied to the empire. The
+assemblage was a brilliant one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts
+and Audenardes in abundance. But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian
+attendants, they were all alike. They were French, they were strangers,
+and she shrank from them.
+
+Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus
+far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point.
+Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not
+allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose
+to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which she
+clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was
+surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only
+by salvos of French artillery.
+
+In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment
+of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.
+Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but
+that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor
+of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had never
+yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess
+flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred
+his whole being with a thrill of novelty. The painted charms of
+Josephine, the mercenary favors of actresses, the calculated ecstasies
+of the women of the court who gave themselves to him from vanity, had
+long since palled upon him. Therefore the impatience with which he
+awaited the coming of Marie Louise became every day more tense.
+
+For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last
+details the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He
+organized them as minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army.
+He showed himself as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those
+great strategic combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of
+Europe. But after all had been arranged--even to the illuminations, the
+cheering, the salutes, and the etiquette of the court--he fell into a
+fever of impatience which gave him sleepless nights and frantic days.
+He paced up and down the Tuileries, almost beside himself. He hurried
+off courier after courier with orders that the postilions should lash
+their horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer still. He scribbled
+love letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-studded portrait of
+the woman who was hurrying toward him.
+
+At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage
+and hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had
+been arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to
+escort her to the capital, so that they might be married in the great
+gallery of the Louvre. At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart
+for Napoleon's convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to
+Marie Louise and her attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into
+the place, drawn by horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor
+could not restrain himself. It was raining torrents and night was
+coming on, yet, none the less, he shouted for fresh horses and pushed
+on to Soissons, where the new empress was to stop and dine. When he
+reached there and she had not arrived, new relays of horses were
+demanded, and he hurried off once more into the dark.
+
+At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding
+in advance of the empress's cortege.
+
+"She will be here in a few moments!" cried Napoleon; and he leaped from
+his carriage into the highway.
+
+The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched
+doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great
+coat reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he
+heard the sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling
+through the mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so
+long been waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer.
+Within it, half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the
+dark, alone.
+
+Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he
+have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration
+which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he
+was an emperor and that the girl--timid and shuddering--was a princess,
+her future story might have been far different. But long ago he had
+ceased to think of anything except his own desires.
+
+He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the
+leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
+emperor!" And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered
+being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The
+door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set
+out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the
+mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of
+rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton
+hands.
+
+At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on,
+still in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with
+so much care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet
+taken place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given
+in the ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and
+not to the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the
+imperial pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with
+little ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a
+line of emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had
+about him something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot
+and lust. ... At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was
+served in bed by the ladies of her household.
+
+These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call to
+mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night
+could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention,
+or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then
+forty-one--practically the same age as his new wife's father, the
+Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her
+years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her
+uncles had described.
+
+Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their
+marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents
+tell you?" And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to
+obey you in everything." But, though she gave compliance, and though
+her freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something
+concealed within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily
+said to a member of the court:
+
+"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the
+world--gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses."
+
+Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very
+heart of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him
+secretly. Somewhat later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court
+to Paris.
+
+"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with
+the empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no
+questions. Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me."
+
+Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he
+returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a
+pair of interrogation-points.
+
+"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to
+her?"
+
+Metternich bowed and made no answer.
+
+"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that
+she is happy. Tell me, did she not say so?"
+
+The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.
+
+"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with
+another bow.
+
+We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted
+herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became
+infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of
+honor. He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the
+memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it
+all. He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle
+Josephine. Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were
+taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from
+approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.
+
+Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.
+Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His
+shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new
+costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in
+despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals, he
+now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a
+character which it had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either
+his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman. Even in the
+first ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out
+his heart to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only
+after he had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his
+movements for the following day. Now, however, he was not merely
+devoted, but uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King
+of Rome, he ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had
+founded a dynasty. He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the
+principles of the Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other
+monarchs, by the grace of God.
+
+As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat
+haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied
+Napoleon's every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can
+scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and that
+her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into
+subjection.
+
+Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her
+appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the
+disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that
+year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played, as
+was said, to "a parterre of kings." This was the climax of his
+magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes
+who were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand
+Army to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband,
+felt to the full the intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister
+coincidence it was here that she first met the other man, then
+unnoticed and little heeded, who was to cast upon her a fascination
+which in the end proved irresistible.
+
+This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something
+mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his
+silent warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an
+Austrian officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in
+a skirmish, he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but
+resisted desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right
+side of his face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of
+his right eye, so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to
+wear a black bandage to conceal the mutilation.
+
+From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving
+against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the
+Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced
+Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse
+to the rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's
+success enraged Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a
+fiend.
+
+Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he
+concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he
+tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was
+comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued
+intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808
+Napoleon wrote this significant sentence:
+
+The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the
+French.
+
+Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this
+Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!
+
+Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old
+nobility of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist,
+and he was a diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he
+was a handsome and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and
+one who bore himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance.
+According to Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the
+hearts of many women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an
+Italian woman named Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her
+husband. She had borne him five children; and in 1813 he had married
+her in order that these children might be made legitimate.
+
+In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as
+Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of
+battle he had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and,
+strangely enough, had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the
+golden eagle of the Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him
+minister of Austria at the court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the
+train of intrigue which was to detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause.
+In 1812, as has just been said, he was with Marie Louise for a short
+time at Dresden, hovering about her, already forming schemes. Two years
+after this he overthrew Murat at Naples; and then hurried on post-haste
+to urge Prince Eugene to abandon Bonaparte.
+
+When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon,
+fighting with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united
+armies of Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon
+be able to separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when
+Napoleon was sent to Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical
+Austrian diplomats resolved that she should never again meet her
+imperial husband. She was made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out
+for her new possessions; and the man with the black band across his
+sightless eye was chosen to be her escort and companion.
+
+When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at
+Milan. A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he
+remarked, with cynical frankness:
+
+"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband."
+
+He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed
+slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the
+great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight
+attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little
+son, the King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers;
+but every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his
+destination. Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in
+Switzerland. She was happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of
+politics and war. Amid the romantic scenery through which she passed
+Neipperg was always by her side, attentive, devoted, trying in
+everything to please her. With him she passed delightful evenings. He
+sang to her in his rich barytone songs of love. He seemed romantic with
+a touch of mystery, a gallant soldier whose soul was also touched by
+sentiment.
+
+One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial
+line, would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far
+inferior to herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was
+less than nothing. Even granting that she had never really loved
+Napoleon, she might still have preferred to maintain her dignity, to
+share his fate, and to go down in history as the empress of the
+greatest man whom modern times have known.
+
+But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance
+of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid
+the rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he
+touched her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his
+way tried to make amends; but the horror of that first night had never
+wholly left her memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of
+sensuality, but her heart had not been given to him. She had been his
+empress. In a sense it might be more true to say that she had been his
+mistress. But she had never been duly wooed and won and made his
+wife--an experience which is the right of every woman. And so this
+Neipperg, with his deferential manners, his soothing voice, his
+magnetic touch, his ardor, and his devotion, appeased that craving
+which the master of a hundred legions could not satisfy.
+
+In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the
+psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to
+his words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which
+masters pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms,
+yielding to his caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him
+no more except by death.
+
+From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with
+her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very
+letter. Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie
+Louise and Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three
+children were born to them before his death in 1829.
+
+It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her
+by the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news
+was brought her she observed, casually:
+
+"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein.
+Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it?"
+
+Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when
+no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his
+thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and
+constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by
+Sir Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:
+
+"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two years
+I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has
+been on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them
+in the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure. The
+barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have
+carefully prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting
+them."
+
+At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high
+magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of
+showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against
+her. Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may
+find. In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly
+before his death he said to his physician, Antommarchi:
+
+"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the
+spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie
+Louise. You will please tell her that I tenderly loved her--that I
+never ceased to love her. You will relate to her all that you have
+seen, and every particular respecting my situation and death."
+
+The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the
+taint of grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in
+it--the lesson that true love cannot be forced or summoned at command,
+that it is destroyed before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out
+only when evoked by sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Famous Affinities of History, V2, by Lyndon Orr
+
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