Empress Josephine: An Historical Sketch of the Days of Napoleon Part 45

"In that case I must decline the position," said Mehul, gravely, "and nothing will alter my resolution. I am a member of the Inst.i.tute--Cherubini is not; I do not wish it to be said that I have misused the good-will with which you honor me for the sake of confiscating to my profit every situation, and of despoiling a man of reputation of the reward to which he is most justly ent.i.tled."

And Mehul, notwithstanding Josephine's intercession and Bonaparte's ill-will, remained firm in his decision; he would not accept the honorable and distinguished position of first singer at the Grand Opera; and Bonaparte, after expressing his determination, would not change it.

Neither would he confer upon Cherubini the honor refused by Mehnl. He therefore commissioned Josephine to name a successor to Paesiello; and she went to Madame de Montesson, to confer with her on the matter.

Madame de Montesson could suggest no definite plan, but she told Josephine of a French composer, of the name of Lesueur, who, notwithstanding his great talents, lived in his native city of Paris poor and unknown, and who had not succeeded in having his opera, "The Bards," represented at the Grand Opera, simply on the ground that he was a Frenchman, and that every one knew Bonaparte's strange aversion to French music.

Josephine's generous heart at once took sides with Lesueur; her exquisite tact taught her that the public ought to know that the first consul would not consult his own personal gratification, when the question was to render justice to a Frenchman. She therefore recommended to her husband, with all her ability, the poor composer Lesueur, who was unknown to fame, and lost in obscurity; she represented his appointment as such an act of generosity and of policy, that Bonaparte acceded to her wishes at once, and appointed Lesueur to the office of first master of the Grand Opera.

And Josephine had the pleasure of seeing that the new opera-leader justified her expectations. His opera, "The Bards," was naturally brought into requisition; it had a brilliant and unexampled success, and even Bonaparte, at the first representation, forgot his prejudices against French music, and applauded quite as heartily as if it had been Italian.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII. PRELUDE TO THE EMPIRE.

The sun of happiness which for Josephine seemed to s.h.i.+ne so brightly over Malmaison, had nevertheless its long shadows and its dark specks; even her gracious countenance was obscured, her heart filled with sad forebodings, and her bosom stung as if by scorpions hidden under flowers.

Josephine had in her immediate circle violent and bitter enemies, who were ever busy in undermining the influence which she possessed over her husband, to steal from his heart the love he cherished for her, and to remove from his side the woman who, by her presence, kept them in the shade, and who wielded or destroyed the influence which they desired to have over him.

These enemies were the brothers and especially the sisters of Bonaparte. Among the brothers of the first consul, Lucien showed to his sister-in-law the most violent and irreconcilable enmity. He left no means untried to do her injury, and to convert her into an object of suspicion, and this because he was convinced that Josephine was the prime cause of the hostile sentiments of Napoleon against him, and because he believed that, Josephine once out of the way, Napoleon's ear would be open to conviction, and that he, Lucien, the most powerful citizen, next to his brother, would be the second "first consul." He was not aware that Napoleon's keen eagle eye had fathomed his ambitious heart; that he was the one who kept Lucien away, because he mistrusted him, because he feared his ambition, and even looked upon him as capable of the bold design of casting Napoleon aside, and setting himself up in his place. Lucien was unaware of the influence which Josephine frequently exerted over the mind of the first consul, in favor of himself; that it was she who had pacified Napoleon's anger at Lucien's marriage, contracted without his consent, and prevented him from annulling it violently. The other brothers of Napoleon, influenced, perhaps, by the enmity of Lucien, were also disaffected toward their sister-in-law, and of them all, only Louis, the youngest, the one who loved the first consul most tenderly and most sincerely, showed toward her due respect and affection.

His three sisters were still more active in their opposition. Constantly quarrelling among themselves, they, however, united heartily in the common feeling of hatred to Josephine. It was she who stood in their way, who every day excited anew their anger by the position she held at Napoleon's side, and in virtue of which the three sisters were thrust into the background. Josephine, the wife of the first consul, was the one to whom France made obeisance, upon whom the amba.s.sadors of foreign powers first waited, and afterward upon the sisters of the first consul.

It was Josephine who took the precedence in solemn ceremonies, and to whom, by Bonaparte's commands, they had to manifest respect. And this woman, who by her eminence placed the sisters of Bonaparte in an inferior position, was not of n.o.bler or more distinguished blood than they; she was not young, she was not beautiful, she was not even able to give birth to a child, for which her husband so intensely longed.

The three sisters might have been submissive to the daughter of a prince, they might have conceded to her the right of precedence, but the widow of the Viscount de Beauharnais was not superior to them in rank or birth; she was far inferior to them in beauty and youth--and yet they had to give way to her, and see her take the first place!

From these sentiments of jealousy and envy sprang the enmity which the three sisters of Bonaparte, Madame Elise Bacciocchi, Madame Pauline Borghese, and Madame Caroline Murat, cherished against Josephine, and which her gentle words and kind heart could never a.s.suage.

Josephine was in their way--she must therefore fall. Such is the key to the right understanding of the conduct of the three beautiful sisters of Napoleon toward the wife of their brother. In their violence they disregarded all propriety, and shrank from no calumny or malice to accomplish their ends. It was a constant warfare with intrigues and malicious suspicions. Every action of Josephine was observed, every step was watched, in the hope of finding something to render her suspicious to her husband. On every occasion the three sisters besieged him with complaints concerning the lofty and proud demeanor of Josephine, and ridiculed him about his old, childless wife, who stood in the way of his growing fame! Though Bonaparte in these conflicts always sided with Josephine against his sisters, yet there probably remained in his heart a sting from the ridicule which they had directed against him.

This hostility of the Bonaparte family was not unknown to Josephine; her soul suffered under these ceaseless attacks, her heart was agonized at the thought that the efforts of her sisters-in-law might finally succeed in withdrawing from her the love of her husband. She was persuaded that even in the Bonaparte family she needed a protector, that she must look for one among the brothers, so as to counteract the enmity of the sisters; and she chose for this Louis Bonaparte. She entreated Napoleon to give to his young, beloved brother the hand of her daughter Hortense.

It would be a new bond chaining Bonaparte to her--a new fortress for her love--if he would but make her daughter his sister-in-law, and his brother her son-in-law.

Napoleon did not oppose her wishes; he consented that Hortense should be married to his brother. It is true the young people were not consulted; for the first time, Josephine's selfishness got the better of her love for her child--she sacrificed the welfare of her daughter to secure her own happiness.

But Hortense loved another, yet she yielded to the entreaties and tears of her mother, and became the wife of this laconic, timid young man, whose meagre, unpretending appearance resembled so little the ideal which her maidenly heart had pictured of her future husband.

Louis on his side had not the slightest inclination for Hortense; he never would have chosen her for his wife, for their characters were too different; their inclinations and wishes were not in sympathy with each other. But through obedience to the wishes of his brother, he accepted the proffered hand of Josephine's daughter, and became the husband of the beautiful, blond-haired Hortense de Beauharnais.

In February, of the year 1802, the marriage of the young couple took place, and this family event was celebrated with the most magnificent festivities. Josephine's joy and happiness were complete--she had thrown a bridge over the abyss, and was now secure against the hostilities of her sisters-in-law, by giving up her own daughter.

Every thing was resplendent with beauty and joy at these festivities; every thing wore an appearance of happiness; only the countenances of the newly-married couple were grave and sad, and their deep melancholy contrasted strikingly with the happiness of which they themselves were the cause. Adorned with diamonds and flowers, Hortense appeared to be a stranger to all the pomp which surrounded her, and to be occupied only with her own sad communings. Louis Bonaparte was pale and grave, like Hortense; he seldom addressed a word to the young wife that the orders of his brother had given him; and she avoided her husband's looks, perhaps to hinder him from reading there the indifference and dislike she felt for him. [Footnote: "Memoires sur l'Imperatrice Josephine, la Cour de Navarre," etc., par Mlle. Ducrest, vol. i., p. 49.]

But Josephine was happy, for she knew the n.o.ble, faithful, and generous spirit of the man to whom she had given her daughter; and she trusted that the two young hearts, now that they were linked together, would soon love one another. She hoped much more from this alliance; she hoped not only to find in it a s.h.i.+eld against domestic animosities, but also to give to her husband, even if indirectly, the children he so much desired--for the offspring of his brother and the daughter of his Josephine would be nearly the same as his own, and they could adopt and love them as such. This was Josephine's hope, the dream of her happiness, when she gave her daughter in marriage to the brother of her husband.

The fact that the first consul was childless was not only a family solicitude, it was also a political question. The people themselves had changed the face of affairs, they had by solemn vote decided to confer the consulate for life upon Napoleon, who had previously been elected for ten years only. In other words, the French people had chosen Bonaparte for their master and ruler, and he now lacked but the t.i.tle to be king. Every one felt and knew that this consulate for life was but the prelude to royalty; that the golden laurel-wreath of the first consul would soon be converted into a golden crown, so as to secure to France an enduring peace, and to make firm its political situation.

With her keen political instinct, Josephine trembled at the thought that the King or Emperor Bonaparte would have to establish for himself a dynasty--that he would have to appease the apprehensions of France by offering to the nation a son who would be his legitimate heir and successor. Thus was the subject of divorce kept hanging over her head until the conviction was forced upon her mind that some day Napoleon would be led into sacrificing his love to politics. Josephine was conscious of it, and consequently the hopes of Napoleon's future greatness, which so pleased his brothers and sisters, only made her sorrowful, and she therefore entreated Bonaparte with tender appeal to remain content with the high dignity he already possessed, and not to tempt fate, nor to allow it to bear him up to a dizzy height, from which the stormy winds of adversity might the more easily prostrate him.

Bonaparte listened to her with a smile, and generally in silence. Once only he replied to her: "Has not your prophetess in Martinique told you that one day you would be more than a queen?"

"And the prophecy is already realized," exclaimed Josephine. "The wife of the consul for life is more than a queen, for her husband is the elect of thirty millions of hearts!" Bonaparte laughed, and said nothing.

Another time Josephine asked him--"Now, Bonaparte, when are you going to make me Empress of the Gauls?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "What an idea," said he; "the little Josephine an empress!"

Josephine answered him with the words of Corneille--"'Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heureux'" (the first king was a successful soldier); and she added, "The wife of this fortunate soldier shares his rank."

He placed his small, white hand, adorned with rings, under her chin, and gazed at her with a deep, strange look.

"Now, Josephine," said he, after a short pause, "your successful soldier is only, for the present, consul for life, and you are sharing his rank.

Be careful, then, that the wife of the first consul surrounds herself with all the brilliancy and the pomp which beseem her dignity. No more economy, no more modest simplicity! The industry of France is at a low ebb--we must make it rise. We must give receptions; we must prove to France that the court of a consul can be as splendid as that of a king.

You understand what pomp is--none better than you! Now show yourself brilliant, magnificent, so that the other ladies may imitate you. But, no foreign stuffs! Silk and velvet from the fabrics of Lyons!"

"Yes," said Josephine, with charming tenderness, "and when afterward my bills become due, you cut them down--you find them too high."

"I only cut down what is too exorbitant," said Bonaparte, laughing. "I have no objection for you to give to the manufacturers any amount of work and profit, but I do not wish them to cheat you." [Footnote: Abrantes, "Memoires" vol. iv.]

Henceforth, the consulate began gradually to exhibit a splendor and pomp which were behind no princely court, and which relegated, amid the dark legends of the fabulous past, the fraternity and the equality of the republic. The absence of pretension, and the simplicity of Malmaison, were now done away with; everywhere the consul for life was followed by the splendors of his dignity, and everywhere Josephine was accompanied by her court.

For now she had a court, and an anteroom, with all its intrigues and flatteries; and its conspiracies already wove their chains around the consul and his wife. It was not suddenly, it was not spontaneously, that this court of the first consul was formed; two years were required for its organization--two years of unceasing labor on the new code of regulations, which etiquette dictated from the remembrances of the past to the palace-officers of the Consul Bonaparte. "How was this in times past? What was the practice?" Such were the constant questions in the interior of the Tuileries, and for the answers they appealed to Madame de Montesson, to the old courtiers, the servants and adherents of royalty. Instead of creating every thing new, they turned by degrees to the usages and manners of the past. Always and in all countries have there been seen at courts caricatures and persons of ill-mannered awkwardness; at the opening of the court of the first consul it is probable that these existed, and appeared still more strange to those who had been used to the manners, traditions, and language of the ancient court of Versailles. Their awkwardness, however, was soon overcome; and Josephine understood so well the rare art of presiding at a court establishment--she was such an accomplished mistress of refined manners and of n.o.ble deportment--she united to the perfect manners of the old n.o.bility the most exquisite adroitness, and she knew so well how to adapt all these advantages to every new circ.u.mstance--that soon every one bowed to her sovereignty and submitted to her laws.

From the glittering halls of the Tuileries there soon disappeared the sword and the uniform, to be replaced by the gold-embroidered dress, the silk stockings, and the chapeau bras; and on the gla.s.sy floors of the Tuileries generals and marshals appeared as fine cavaliers, who, submitting to the rules of etiquette, left behind with their regiments the coa.r.s.e language of the camp. Many of these young generals and heroes had married the beautiful but impoverished daughters of the aristocrats of old monarchical France. These young women, who were the representatives of the ancient n.o.blesse, brought to the Tuileries the traditions of their mothers, and distinguished themselves by the ease of their courtly deportment and their graceful manners; and they thus unconsciously became the teachers of the other young women, who, like their husbands, owed their aristocratic name only to the sword and to their fresh laurels, and not to ancient escutcheons.

In the Tuileries and in St. Cloud there were reception-days, audience-days, and great and small levees, at which were a.s.sembled all that France possessed of rank, name, and fame, and where the amba.s.sadors of all the powers accredited at the court of the consul, where all the higher clergy and the pope's nuncio, appeared in full dress.

Bonaparte ventured to remove still further from the landmarks of the revolution, and from its so-called conquests. He restored to France the church; he reopened the temples of religion, and he also gave back to the people their priests.

Just as in the days of old monarchical France, every Sunday, and at every festival, a solemn ma.s.s was said at St. Cloud; and in the gla.s.s gallery on the way to the chapel, Bonaparte received pet.i.tions and granted short audiences. France, with the instinct of its old inclinations and habits, readily returned to this new order of things; and even those who once had with enthusiasm saluted the G.o.ddess of Reason, went now, with hands joined in prayer and eyes bent low, to Notre Dame, to offer again their supplications to the G.o.d of Love.

Every thing seemed to return to the old track, every thing was as in the days preceding the revolution--the re-establishment of the throne, the national, willing approbation that the republic had become a monarchy, was, however, still wanting.

Finally, on the 18th of May, 1804, France spoke out the decisive word, and, by the voice of its representatives the senators, it offered to Bonaparte the crown, and requested him to ascend as emperor the throne of France.

Napoleon acceded to these wishes, and, as the senate, in a ceremonious procession, marshalled by Cambaceres, came to St. Cloud to communicate to Bonaparte the wish of France, and to offer to him and to Josephine the dignities of an empire, he accepted it without surprise, and apparently without joy, and allowed himself to be proclaimed NAPOLEON, THE FIRST EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH.

On this memorable day, after Cambaceres, in the name of the senate and of France, had addressed the first consul as the actual emperor, he turned to Josephine, who, with that unparalleled admixture of grandeur, grace, and tender womanly beauty, which were all so especially her own, was present at this audience at Napoleon's side.

"Madame," said Cambaceres, "there remains yet to the senate a pleasant duty to perform: to bring to your imperial majesty the homage of its respect and the expression of grat.i.tude of the French people. Yes, madame, the public sentiment acknowledges the good which you are ever performing; that you are always accessible to the unfortunate; that you use your influence with the chief magistrate only to diminish evil, and to procure a hearing to those who seek it; and that your majesty with this well-doing combines the most amiable tenderness, rendering thankfulness a pleasant duty. These n.o.ble qualities of your majesty foretell that the name of the Empress Josephine will be a watchword of trust and hope; and, as the virtues of Napoleon will ever be to his followers an example to teach them the difficult art of government, so also, the lively remembrance of your goodness will teach to their honorable wives that to strive to dry the tear is the surest means of ruling the heart. The senate deems itself happy in being the first to congratulate your imperial majesty, and he who has the honor of addressing you these sentiments in the name of the senate, dares trust that you will ever number him among your most faithful servants."

It was, then, decided! France had accepted her master, and Cambaceres in his solemn address had already marked out the situation of France and of her rulers. Bonaparte and Josephine were now their imperial majesties, the senators were their most faithful servants. What remained to the people but to call themselves "faithful subjects?"

The people, however, had made known their wishes only through the voice of the senate; it was the senators who had converted Bonaparte into the Emperor Napoleon; but the people were also to make their will known in a solemn manner; they were, through a universal public suffrage, to decide whether the imperial dignity should be given only for life to Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, or whether it should be hereditary in his family.

France, wearied with storms and divisions, decided with her five millions of votes for the hereditary imperial dignity in Bonaparte's family, and thus the people of France created their fourth dynasty.

Meanwhile Josephine received this new decision of the nation, not with that disquietude and care which she had formerly experienced.