Of the three Bonaparte "graces" the most lovely by far (though each was pa.s.sing fair) was Pauline, who, though still little more than a child, gave promise of that rare perfection of face and figure which was to make her the most beautiful woman in all France. "It is impossible, with either pen or brush," wrote one who knew her, "to do any justice to her charms--the brilliance of her eyes, which dazzled and thrilled all on whom they fell; the glory of her black hair, rippling in a cascade to her knees; the cla.s.sic purity of her Grecian profile, the wild-rose delicacy of her complexion, the proud, dainty poise of her head, and the exquisite modelling of the figure which inspired Canova"s "Venus Victrix.""
Such was Pauline Bonaparte, whose charms, although then immature, played such havoc with the young men of Ma.r.s.eilles, and who thus early began that career of conquest which was to afford so much gossip for the tongue of scandal. That the winsome little minx had her legion of lovers from the day she set foot in Ma.r.s.eilles, at the age of thirteen, we know; but it was not until Freron came on the scene that her volatile little heart was touched--Freron, the handsome c.o.xcomb and arch-revolutionary, who was sent to Ma.r.s.eilles as a Commissioner of the Convention.
To Pauline, the gay, gallant Parisian, penniless adventurer though he was, was a veritable hero of romance; and at sight of him she completely lost her heart. It was a _grande pa.s.sion_, which he was by no means slow to return. Those were delicious hours which Pauline spent in the company of her beloved "Stanislas," hours of ecstasy; and when he left Ma.r.s.eilles she pursued him with the most pa.s.sionate protestations.
"Yes," she wrote, "I swear, dear Stanislas, never to love any other than thee; my heart knows no divided allegiance. It is thine alone. Who could oppose the union of two souls who seek to find no other happiness than in a mutual love?" And again, "Thou knowest how I worship thee. It is not possible for Paulette to live apart from her adored Stanislas. I love thee for ever, most pa.s.sionately, my beautiful G.o.d, my adorable one--I love thee, love thee, love thee!"
In such hot words this child of fifteen poured out her soul to the Paris dandy. "Neither mamma," she vowed, "nor anyone in the world shall come between us." But Pauline had not counted on her brother Napoleon, whose foot was now placed on the ladder of ambition, at the top of which was an Imperial crown, and who had other designs for his sister than to marry her to a penniless n.o.body. In vain did Pauline rage and weep, and declare that "she would die--_voila tout!_" Napoleon was inexorable; and the flower of her first romance was trodden ruthlessly under his feet.
When Junot, his own aide-de-camp, next came awooing Pauline, he was equally obdurate. "No," he said to the young soldier; "you have nothing, she has nothing. And what is twice nothing?" And thus lover number two was sent away disconsolate.
Napoleon"s sun was now in the ascendant, and his family were basking in its rays. From the Ma.r.s.eilles slums they were transported first to a sumptuous villa at Antibes; then to the Castle of Montebello, at Naples.
The days of poverty were gone like an evil dream; the sisters of the famous General and coming Emperor were now young ladies of fashion, courted and fawned on. Their lovers were not Ma.r.s.eilles tradesmen or obscure soldiers and journalists (like Junot and Freron), but brilliant Generals and men of the great world; and among them Napoleon now sought a husband for his prettiest and most irresponsible sister.
This, however, proved no easy task. When he offered her to his favourite General, Marmont, he was met with a polite refusal. "She is indeed charming and lovely," said Marmont; "but I fear I could not make her happy." Then, waxing bolder, he continued: "I have dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, virtue; and these dreams I can scarcely hope to realise in your sister." Albert Permon, Napoleon"s old schoolfellow, next declined the honour of Pauline"s hand, although it held the bait of a high office and splendid fortune.
The explanation of these refusals is not far to seek if we believe Arnault"s description of Pauline--"An extraordinary combination of the most faultless physical beauty and the oddest moral laxity. She had no more manners than a schoolgirl--she talked incoherently, giggled at everything and nothing, mimicked the most serious personages, put out her tongue at her sister-in-law.... She was a good child naturally rather than voluntarily, for she had no principles."
But Pauline was not to wait long, after all, for a husband. Among the many men who fluttered round her, willing to woo if not to wed the empty-headed beauty, was General Leclerc, young and rich, but weak in body and mind, "a quiet, insignificant-looking man," who at least loved her pa.s.sionately, and would make a pliant husband to the capricious little autocrat. And we may be sure Napoleon heaved a sigh of relief when his madcap sister was safely tied to her weak-kneed General.
Pauline was at last free to conduct her flirtations secure from the frowns of the brother she both feared and adored, and she seems to have made excellent use of her opportunities; and, what was even more to her, to encourage to the full her pa.s.sion for finery. Dress and love filled her whole life; and while her idolatrous husband lavishly supplied the former, he turned a conveniently blind eye to the latter.
Remarkable stories are told of Pauline"s extravagant and daring costumes at this time. Thus, at a great ball in Madame Permon"s Paris mansion, she appeared in a dress of cla.s.sic scantiness of Indian muslin, ornamented with gold palm leaves. Beneath her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was a cincture of gold, with a gorgeous jewelled clasp; and her head was wreathed with bands spotted like a leopard"s skin, and adorned with bunches of gold grapes.
When this bewitching Bacchante made her appearance in the ballroom the sensation she created was so great that the dancing stopped instantly; women and men alike climbed on chairs to catch a glimpse of the rare and radiant vision, and murmurs of admiration and envy ran round the _salon_. Her triumph was complete. In the hush that followed, a voice was heard: "_Quel dommage!_ How lovely she would be, if it weren"t for her ears. If I had such ears, I would cut them off, or hide them."
Pauline heard the cruel words. The flush of mortification and anger flamed in her cheeks; she burst into tears and walked out of the room.
Madame de Coutades, her most jealous rival, had found a rich revenge.
General Leclerc did not live long to play the slave to his little autocrat; and when he died at San Domingo, the beautiful widow returned to France, accompanied by his embalmed body, with her glorious hair, which she had cut off for the purpose, wreathing his head! She had not, however, worn her weeds many months before she was once more surrounded by her court of lovers--actors, soldiers, singers, on each of whom in turn she lavished her smiles; and such time as she could spare from their flatteries and ogling she spent at the card-table, with fortune-tellers, or, chief joy of all, in decking her beauty with wondrous dresses and jewels.
But the charming widow, sister of the great Napoleon, was not long to be left unclaimed; and this time the choice fell on Prince Camillo Borghese, a handsome, black-haired Italian, who allied to a head as vain and empty as her own the physical graces and gifts of an Admirable Crichton, and who, moreover, was lord of all the famed Borghese riches.
Pauline had now reached dizzy heights, undreamed of in the days, only ten short years earlier, when she was coquetting in home-made finery with the young tradesmen of Ma.r.s.eilles. She was a Princess, bearing the greatest name in all Italy; and to this dignity her gratified brother added that of Princess of Gustalla. All the world-famous Borghese jewels were hers to deck her beauty with--a small Golconda of priceless gems; there was gold galore to satisfy her most extravagant whims; and she was still young--only twenty-five--and in the very zenith of her loveliness.
Picture, then, the pride with which, one early day of her new bridehood, she drove to the Palace of St Cloud in the gorgeous Borghese State carriage, behind six horses, and with an escort of torch-bearers, to pay a formal call on her sister-in-law, Josephine, Empress-to-be. She had decked herself in a wonderful creation of green velvet; she was ablaze from head to foot with the Borghese diamonds. Such a dazzling vision could not fail to fill Josephine with envy--Josephine, who had hitherto treated her with such haughty patronage.
As she sailed into the _salon_ in all her Queen of Sheba splendour, it was to be greeted by her sister-in-law in a modest dress of muslin, without a solitary gem to relieve its simplicity; and--horror!--to find that the room had been re-decorated in blue by the artful Josephine--a colour absolutely fatal to her green magnificence! It was thus a very disgusted Princess who made her early exit from the palace between a double line of bowing flunkeys, masking her anger behind an affectation of ultra-Royal dignity.
Still, Pauline was now a _grande dame_ indeed, who could really afford to patronise even Napoleon"s wife. Her Court was more splendid than that of Josephine. She had lovers by the score--from Blanguini, who composed his most exquisite songs to sing for her ears alone, to Forbin, her artist Chamberlain, whose brushes she inspired in a hundred paintings of her lovely self in as many unconventional guises. Her caskets of jewels were matched by the most wonderful collection of dresses in France, the richest and daintiest confections, from pearl embroidered ball-gowns which cost twenty thousand francs to the mauve and silver in which she went a-hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau. At Pet.i.t Trianon and in the Faubourg St Honore, she had palaces that were dreams of beauty and luxury. The only thorn in her bed of roses was, in fact, her husband, the Prince, the very sight of whom was sufficient to spoil a day for her.
When, at Napoleon"s bidding, she accompanied Borghese to his Governorship beyond the Alps, she took in her train seven wagon-loads of finery. At Turin she held the Court of a Queen, to which the Prince was only admitted on sufferance. Royal visits, dinners, dances, receptions followed one another in dazzling succession; behind her chair, at dinner or reception, always stood two gigantic negroes, crowned with ostrich plumes. She was now "sister of the Emperor," and all the world should know it!
If only she could escape from her detested husband she would be the happiest woman on earth. But Napoleon on this point was adamant. In her rage and rebellion she tore her hair, rolled on the floor, took drugs to make her ill; and at last so succeeded in alarming her Imperial brother that he summoned her back to France, where her army of lovers gave her a warm welcome, and where she could indulge in any vanity and folly unchecked.
Matters were now hastening to a tragic climax for Napoleon and the family he had raised from slumdom in Ma.r.s.eilles to crowns and coronets.
Josephine had been divorced, to Pauline"s undisguised joy; and her place had been taken by Marie Louise, the proud Austrian, whom she liked at least as little. When Napoleon fell from his throne, she alone of all his sisters helped to cheer his exile in Elba; for the brother she loved and feared was the only man to whom Pauline"s fickle heart was ever true. She even stripped herself of all her jewels to make the way smooth back to his crown. And when at last news came to her at Rome of his death at St Helena it was she who shed the bitterest tears and refused to be comforted. That an empire was lost, was nothing compared with the loss of the brother who had always been so lenient to her failings, so responsive to her love.
Two years later her own end came at Florence. When she felt the cold hand of death on her, she called feebly for a mirror, that she might look for the last time on her beauty. "Thank G.o.d," she whispered, as she gazed, "I am still lovely! I am ready to die." A few moments later, with the mirror still clutched in her hand, and her eyes still feasting on the charms which time and death itself were powerless to dim, died Pauline Bonaparte, sister of an Emperor and herself an Empress by the right of her incomparable beauty.
CHAPTER XI
A SIREN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
When Wilhelmine Encke first opened her eyes on the world one day in the year 1754, he would have been a bold prophet who would have predicted that she would one day be the uncrowned Queen of the Court of Russia, _plus Reine que la Reine_, and that her children would have in their veins the proudest blood in Europe. Such a prophecy might well have been laughed to scorn, for little Wilhelmine had as obscure a cradle as almost any infant in all Prussia. Her father was an army bugler, who wore private"s uniform in Frederick the Great"s army; and her early years were to be spent playing with other soldiers" children in the sordid environment of Berlin barracks.
When her father turned his back on the army, while Wilhelmine was still nursing her dolls, it was to play the humble role of landlord of a small tavern, from which he was lured by the bait of a place as French-horn player in Frederick"s private band; and the goal of his modest ambition was reached when he was appointed trumpeter to the King.
This was Herr Encke"s position when the curtain rises on our story at Potsdam, and shows us Wilhelmine, an unattractive maid of ten, the Cinderella of her family, for whom there seemed no better prospect than a soldier-husband, if indeed she were lucky enough to capture him. She was, in fact, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, removed by a whole world from her beautiful eldest sister Charlotte, who counted among her many admirers no less exalted a wooer than Prince Frederick William, the King"s nephew and heir to his throne.
There was, indeed, no more beautiful or haughty damsel in all Potsdam than this trumpeter"s daughter who had caught the amorous fancy of the Prince, then, as to his last day, the slave of every pretty face that crossed his path. But Charlotte Encke was much too imperious a young lady to hold her Royal lover long in fetters. He quickly wearied of her caprices, her petulances, and her exhibitions of temper; and the climax came one day when in a fit of anger she struck her little sister, in his presence, and he took up the cudgels for Wilhelmine.
This was the last straw for the disillusioned and disgusted Prince, who sent Charlotte off to Paris, where as the Countess Matushke she played the fine lady at her lover"s cost, while the Prince took her Cinderella sister under his protection. He took her education into his own hands, provided her with masters to teach her a wide range of accomplishments, from languages to dancing and deportment, while he himself gave her lessons in history and geography. Nor did he lack the reward of his benevolent offices; for Wilhelmine, under his ministrations, not only developed rare gifts and graces of mind, like many another Cinderella before her; she blossomed into a rose of girlhood, more beautiful even than her imperious sister, and with a sweetness of character and a winsomeness which Charlotte could never have attained.
On her part, grat.i.tude to her benefactor rapidly grew into love for the handsome and courtly Prince; on his, sympathy for the ill-used Cinderella, into a pa.s.sion for the lovely maiden hovering on the verge of a still more beautiful womanhood. It was a mutual pa.s.sion, strong and deep, which now linked the widely contrasted lives of the King-to-be and the trumpeter"s daughter--a pa.s.sion which, with each, was to last as long as life itself.
Wilhelmine was now formally installed in the place of the deposed Charlotte as favourite of the heir to the throne; and idyllic years followed, during which she gave pledges of her love to the man who was her husband in all but name. That her purse was often empty was a matter to smile at; that she had to act as "breadwinner" to her family, and was at times reduced to such straits that she was obliged to p.a.w.n some of her small stock of jewellery in order to provide her lover with a supper, was a bagatelle. She was the happiest young woman in Prussia.
Even what seemed to be a crowning disaster, fortune turned into a boon for her. When news of this unlicensed love-making came to the King"s ears, he was furious. It was intolerable that the destined ruler of a great and powerful nation should be governed and duped by a woman of the people. He gave his nephew a sound rating--alike for his extravagance and his amour; and packed off Wilhelmine to join her sister in Paris.
But, for once, Frederick found that he had made a mistake. The Prince, robbed of the woman he loved, took the bit in his teeth, and plunged so deeply into extravagant dallying with ballet-dancers and stars of the opera that the King was glad to choose the lesser evil, and to summon Wilhelmine back to her Prince"s arms. One stipulation only he made, that she should make her home away from the capital and the dangerous allurements which his nephew found there.
Now at last we find Cinderella happily installed, with the King"s august approval, in a beautiful home which has since blossomed into the splendours of Charlottenburg. Here she gave birth to a son, whom Frederick dubbed Count de la Marke in his nurse"s arms, but who was fated never to leave his cradle. This child of love, the idol of his parents, sleeps in a splendid mausoleum in the great Protestant Church of Berlin.
As a sop to Prussian morality and to make the old King quite easy, a complaisant husband was now found for the Prince"s favourite in his chamberlain, Herr Rietz, son of a palace gardener; and Frederick William himself looked on while the woman he loved, the mother of his children, was converted by a few priestly words into a "respectable married woman"--only to leave the altar on his own arm, his wife in the eyes of the world.
The time was now drawing near when Wilhelmine was to reach the zenith of her adventurous life. One August day in 1786 Frederick the Great drew his last breath in the Potsdam Palace, and his nephew awoke to be greeted by his chamberlain as "Your Majesty." The trumpeter"s daughter was at last a Queen, in fact, if not in name, more secure in her husband"s love than ever, and with long years of splendour and happiness before her. That his fancy, ever wayward, flitted to other women as fair as herself, did not trouble her a whit. Like Madame de Pompadour, she was prepared even to encourage such rivalry, so long as the first place (and this she knew) in her husband"s heart was una.s.sailably her own.
Picture our Cinderella now in all her new splendours, moving as a Queen among her courtiers, receiving the homage of princes and amba.s.sadors as her right, making her voice heard in the Council Chamber, and holding her _salon_, to which all the great ones of the earth flocked to pay tribute to her beauty and her gifts of mind. It was a strange transformation from the barracks-kitchen to the Queendom of one of the greatest Courts of Europe; but no Queen cradled in a palace ever wore her honours with greater dignity, grace, and simplicity than this daughter of an army bandsman.
The days of the empty purse were, of course, at an end. She had now her ten thousand francs a month for "pin-money," her luxuriously appointed palace at Charlottenburg, and her Berlin mansion, "Unter den Linden,"
with its private theatre, in which she and her Royal lover, surrounded by their brilliant Court, applauded the greatest actors from Paris and Vienna. It is said that many of these stage-plays were of questionable decency, with more than a suggestion of the garden of Eden in them; but this is an aspersion which Madame de Rietz indignantly repudiates in her "Memoirs."
While Wilhelmine was thus happy in her Court magnificence, varied by days of "delightful repose," at Charlottenburg, France was in the throes of her Revolution, drenched with the blood of her greatest men and fairest women; her King had lost his crown and his head with it; and Europe was in arms against her. When Frederick William joined his army camped on the Rhine bank, Wilhelmine was by his side to counsel him as he wavered between war and peace. The fate of the coalition against France was practically in the hands of the trumpeter"s daughter, whose voice was all for peace. "What matters it," she said, "how France is governed? Let her manage her own affairs, and let Europe be saved from the horrors of bloodshed."
In vain did the envoys of Spain and Italy, Austria and England, practise all their diplomacy to place her influence in the scale of war. When Lord Henry Spencer offered her a hundred thousand guineas if she would dissuade her husband from concluding a treaty with France, she turned a deaf ear to all his pleading and arguments. Such influence as she possessed should be exercised in the interests of peace, and thus it was that the vacillating King deserted his allies, and signed the Treaty of Bale, in 1795.
Such was the triumphant issue of Madame Rietz"s intervention in the affairs of Europe; such the proof she gave to the world of her conquest of a King. It was thus with a light heart that she turned her back on the Rhine camp; and with her husband"s children and a splendid retinue set out on her journey to Italy, to see which was the greatest ambition of her life. At the Austrian Court she was coldly received, it is true, thanks to her part in the Treaty of Bale; but in Italy she was greeted as a Queen. At Naples Queen Caroline received her as a sister; the trumpeter"s daughter was the brilliant centre of fetes and banquets and receptions such as might have gratified the vanity of an Empress: while at Florence she spent days of ideal happiness under the blue sky of Italy and among her beauties of Nature and Art.
It was at Venice that she wrote to her King lover, "Your Majesty knows well that, for myself, I place no value on the foolish vanities of Court etiquette; but I am placed in an awkward position by my daughter being raised to the rank of Countess, while I am still in the lowly position of a bourgeoise." She had, in fact, always declined the honour of a t.i.tle, which Frederick William had so often begged her to accept; and it was only for her daughter"s sake, when the question of an alliance between the young Countess de la Marke and Lord Bristol"s heir arose, that she at last stooped to ask for what she had so long refused.
A few weeks later her brother, the King"s equerry, placed in her hands the patent which made her Countess Lichtenau, with the right to bear on her shield of arms the Prussian eagle and the Royal crown.
Wherever the Countess (as we must now call her) went on her Italian tour she drew men to her feet by the magnetism of her beauty, who would have paid no homage to her as _chere amie_ of a King; for she was now in the early thirties, in the full bloom of the loveliness that had its obscure budding in the Potsdam barrack-rooms. Young and old were equally powerless to resist her fascinations. She had, indeed, no more ardent slave and admirer than my Lord Bristol, the octogenarian Bishop of Londonderry, whose pa.s.sion for the Countess, young enough to be his granddaughter, was that of a lovesick youth.
From "dear Countess and adorable friend," he quickly leaps in his letters to "my dear Wilhelmine." He looks forward with the impatience of a boy to seeing her at "that terrestrial paradise which is called Naples, where we shall enjoy perpetual spring and spend delightful days in listening to the divine _Paesiello_. Do you know," he adds, "I pa.s.sed two hours of real delight this morning in simply contemplating your elegant bedroom where only the elegant sleeper was missing."