My maternal heart was the more open to this emotion because I had felt doubtful about the result. Now, however, that I am rea.s.sured by Your Majesty, I have no further fear, and I cheerfully share my daughter"s happiness. She has described it to me with touching sincerity, and is never tired of telling me how gratified she is by the many attentions she has received since your meeting. Her sole desire is to make Your Majesty happy, and I venture to flatter myself that she will succeed; for I know her character well, and it is excellent. Louise promises to write to me regularly, and this somewhat consoles me for a real loss.
It is pleasant to be able to keep up one"s relations with a person one loves, and I am sure that I feel for her the tenderness of a mother, so kind has she been to me, treating me like a real friend. Your Majesty is good enough to say that your wife has spoken about me. I am not surprised; for I know that she, like me, has a very loving heart. But with due regard to truth, I cannot leave Your Majesty under any mistake with regard to her obligations towards me. From what she says you may form a favorable opinion of her candor. If I can boast of anything, it is that I have tried to preserve this candor, which may at first have made her seem timid, while in fact it renders her only the more worthy of Your Majesty"s esteem and friendship.
"Some may blame me because my daughter has so few ideas, such a meagre education. I acknowledge it; but as to the world and its perils, one learns them only too soon, and I will say frankly she was only eighteen, and I wanted to preserve her innocence, and cared only that she should have a loving heart, an honest nature, and clear ideas about what she did know. I have entrusted her to Your Majesty. I beg you, as her mother, to be my daughter"s friend and guide, as she is your devoted wife. She will be happy if Your Majesty will always confidently appeal to her; for, I say once more, she is young and too inexperienced to face the world"s dangers and to fill her position understandingly. But I perceive that I am wearying Your Majesty with this long letter. You will pardon this outpouring of a mother"s heart, which knows no bounds when a beloved daughter"s happiness is concerned. I must say one thing more.
Your Majesty sets too high a value on my eagerness to satisfy you by letting you have the portrait of my dear Louise. I was too anxious to please you as soon as possible, not to be selfish in this matter, but I shall certainly thoroughly appreciate the portrait you promise me. It will have this advantage, that it will show me how happy she is."
It must be said that seldom has a step-mother spoken of her step-daughter in a more tender and more touching way. No letter could have better pleased Napoleon; it was not written in official style, with all the formal compliments, but rather with affectionate sincerity. When he read it, Napoleon must have felt that he had at last really entered the brotherhood of kings. Everything she had said of her step-daughter was true. The young Empress of the French had a candor, a simplicity, a freshness of mind and body, which delighted her husband. Doubtless the feeling she inspired was not a fiery, romantic pa.s.sion such as he had felt for his first wife; and Marie Louise, with her northern beauty, had not the same charm as Josephine, the bewitching creole. Napoleon certainly would not have written to his second wife burning letters, in the style of the _Nouvelle Heloise_, such as he sent to Josephine during the first Italian campaign. His love for Marie Louise was less fervent, but he esteemed her more highly. He thought that the society of the Austrian court was after all a better school for a wife than the society of the Directory, and he had found in Marie Louise, a girl worthy of all regard, one invaluable blessing, one treasure which a widow, charming, it is true, but a coquette, lacked; namely, innocence.
XVI.
THE TRIP IN THE NORTH.
"Napoleon and Marie Louise left Compiegne April 27, 1810, at seven o"clock in the morning, to make a journey in several of the northern departments, which was one long ovation. In their suite were the Grand Duke of Wurzburg, brother of the Emperor of Austria, the Queen of Naples, the King and Queen of Westphalia, Prince Eugene de Beauharnais, Prince Schwarzenberg, and Count Metternich. The last-named says in his Memoirs: "I was an eye-witness of the enthusiasm with which the young Empress was everywhere greeted by the populace. At Saint Quentin Napoleon formally expressed his desire that I should be present at an audience to which he had summoned the authorities of the city. "I should like to show you," he said, "how I am accustomed to speak to these people." I saw that the Emperor was anxious to let me see the extent and variety of his knowledge of matters of administration.""
Those who care to know the adulation offered to Napoleon and Marie Louise on this expedition should read the following pa.s.sage from M.
de Bausset"s Memoirs: "Their Majesties went off to visit some of the northern departments, in order to give Paris and all the great bodies of the State the time required for preparing the festivities which circ.u.mstances made necessary. It was a triumphal march. The provinces greeted their young and beautiful Empress with enthusiasm. Amid all the brilliant tokens of respect, one attracted especial notice. It was a little hamlet, with a triumphal arch, bearing the simplest inscriptions.
On the front was written _Pater Noster_; on the reverse, _Ave Maria, gratia plena_. The mayor and the village priest presented wild-flowers.
Flattery could have devised no more delicate attention." Thus we have M.
de Bausset finding it simple to compare the Emperor to the Almighty and the Empress to the Blessed Virgin. Was not this a sign of the times?
Thiers says of this journey: "The populace, glad of a break in their monotonous lives, hasten to meet their princes, whoever they may be, and are often lavish of their applause on the very brink of a catastrophe.
Whenever Napoleon appeared anywhere, curiosity and admiration were strong enough to gather a mult.i.tude; and when he had rounded out his wonderful destiny by marrying an archd.u.c.h.ess, the interest and enthusiasm were all the greater. Indeed, everywhere he appeared, their raptures were warm and unanimous."
Starting from Compiegne April 27, the Emperor and Empress reached Saint Quentin the same day. The ca.n.a.l connecting the Seine with the Scheldt was illuminated, and Napoleon and his court sailed over it in gondolas richly decked with flags. On the 30th of April they embarked on the ca.n.a.l which goes from Brussels to the Ruppel, and by the Ruppel to the Scheldt. The First Lord of the Admiralty and Admiral Missiessy were in command of the Imperial flotilla. When they arrived in sight of the squadron of Antwerp, which Napoleon had created, all the ships, frigates, corvettes, gunboats, were drawn up in line, and Marie Louise pa.s.sed under the fire of a thousand cannon thundering in her honor.
When the sovereigns entered the city, the throng was most dense. "It expressed," the _Moniteur_ tells us, "the grat.i.tude of the inhabitants for its second founder. It was impossible not to make a comparison between the present condition of the port and city of Antwerp with its condition seven years before, on His Majesty"s first visit."
At Antwerp they made a stay of five days, which the Emperor, who was on his horse at sunrise, spent in visiting the works of the port, the a.r.s.enal, the fortifications, in holding reviews, in inspecting the fleet. May 2 there was launched a ship of eighty guns, the largest ship that had ever been built on the stocks of this port. It was blessed by the Archbishop of Mechlin. According to the Baron de Meneval, "the Empress was affable, simple, and unpretentious. Possibly the memory of Josephine"s charm and earnest desire to please was a misfortune to Marie Louise. Her reserve might have been attributed to German family pride, but that would have been a mistake; no one was ever simpler or less haughty. Her natural timidity and her unfamiliarity with the part she had to play, alone gave her an air of stiffness. She was so thoroughly identified with her new position and so touched by the regard and affection with which the Emperor was treated, that when he proposed to her to stay at Antwerp while he was visiting the islands of the Zuyder Zee, she besought him to take her with him, undeterred by any fear of the fatigues of the journey." Consequently Napoleon started with her to visit Bois-le-Duc, Berg-op-Zoom, Breda, Middelburg, Flushing, and the island of Walcheren, which the English had evacuated four months before.
At Breda the Emperor soundly abused a deputation of the Catholic clergy whom he knew to be opposed to him. "Gentlemen," he broke out, "why are you not in sacerdotal garments? Are you attorneys, notaries, or physicians? ... Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar"s. The Pope is not Caesar; I am. It is not to the Pope, but to me, that G.o.d has given a sceptre and a sword.... Ah, you are unwilling to pray for me. Is it because a Roman priest has excommunicated me? But who gave him any such power? Who has the power to release subjects from their oath of allegiance to the legally appointed ruler? No one; and you ought to know it.... Renounce the hope of putting me in a convent and of shaving my head, like Louis the Debonair, and submit yourselves; for I am Caesar! If you don"t, I shall banish you from my empire, and scatter you over the surface of the earth like the Jews.... You belong to the diocese of Mechlin; go to your bishop; take your oath before him, obey the Concordat, and then I will see what commands I shall have to give you."
After visiting the towns on the frontier, as well as the islands of Tholen, Schomven, North and South Beveland, and Walcheren, Napoleon, constantly accompanied by Marie Louise, ascended the Scheldt once more, merely pa.s.sed through Antwerp, made a brief stop at Brussels, spent three days at the castle of Lacken, and hastily ran through Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Dunkirk, Lille, Calais, Dieppe, Havre, and Rouen.
June 1, 1810, they were back at Saint Cloud. The Baron de Meneval tells us that Marie Louise was extremely delighted with the way she had been greeted throughout this journey. Everywhere she had been received under arches of triumph, with countless festivities, b.a.l.l.s, illuminations, and every token of the popular enthusiasm and affection, so that "she was able to appreciate the French character, and to decide that she would readily grow accustomed to a country where the devotion of the people to their sovereign, the enormous influence he wielded, and the affection he bore to them, as well as theirs for his cause, filled her with hopes for a happy life." Napoleon"s life at that time was one long deification.
Louis XIV. himself, the Sun-King, had never received more flattery in prose and verse. All the official poets had tuned their lyres to sing his marriage, and the _Moniteur_ was full of dithyrambs. It also published a translation of an Italian cantata ent.i.tled, "_La Jerogamia di Creta, Inno del Cavaliere Vincenzo Monti_," which began thus: "The silence of Olympus is broken up by the noisy neighing of coursers and by the prolonged and disturbing rattle of swift chariots. The Immortals descend to the banks of the Gnossus to celebrate with fitting rites the new marriage of the ruler of the G.o.ds." It ended thus: "The waves of two seas, in motion, though no wind blows, roar in terror, and Neptune, alarmed, feels with surprise his trident tremble in his hand. If such is the sport of the monarch of thunder when he yields to the sweets of Hymen, what will it be when he again grasps the thunderbolt? Divine nurses of Jove, bees of Mount Panacra, ah! distil upon my verses, from the summit of Dicte, one drop of the sweet-savored honey, food of the King of Heaven, that my August sovereign, whose soul is like Jupiter"s, may find some pleasure in hearing them!"
Napoleon seemed to rule the present and the future. Even those who had fought against him had become his courtiers. The most ill.u.s.trious of these, the Archduke Charles, to whom he had just sent the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor, as well as a simple cross of a knight, which was more precious because he himself had worn it, wrote to him: "Sire, Your Majesty"s Amba.s.sador has transmitted to me the decorations of the Legion of Honor, and the affectionate letter with which you have honored me.
Being deeply impressed by these tokens of your goodwill, I hasten to express to Your Majesty my sincere grat.i.tude, which is only equalled by my admiration for Your Majesty"s great qualities. The esteem of a great man is the fairest flower of the field of honor, and I have always jealously desired, Sire, to merit yours."
A stranger thing yet: even the Spanish Bourbons, the victims of the Bayonne treachery, the princes whom Napoleon had ousted, set no limits to their adulation. Nowhere was the Emperor"s marriage with Marie Louise celebrated with greater show of enthusiasm than at the castle of Valencay, where Ferdinand III. was living. The Spanish Prince had a _Te Deum_ sung in the chapel; he gave a banquet, at which he proposed this toast: "To the health of our August Sovereigns, the great Napoleon and Marie Louise, his August spouse." In the evening there were magnificent fireworks. He chose that moment when his subjects were exposing themselves to every danger, welcoming every sacrifice in their bitter war in his name, against the French, to beg Napoleon to adopt him as his son and to concede to him the honor of letting him appear at court.
XVII.
THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1810.
The whole month of June was filled with a succession of brilliant festivities. Under the Empire things were not done by halves; battles or b.a.l.l.s, everything was on a vast scale. "Never," says Alfred de Musset, "were there so many sleepless nights as during this man"s lifetime; never was there such a silence when any one spoke of death: and yet, never was there so much joy, so much life, so much warlike feeling in every heart; never had there been a brighter sun than that which dried so much blood. It was said that G.o.d had created it for this man, and it was called the sun of Austerlitz; but he made it himself with his ever-roaring cannon, that dispelled the clouds on the morrow of his victories."
The entertainment given to the Emperor and Empress by the city of Paris, June 10, was magnificent. There were great rejoicings in the capital on that day. In the afternoon there were public sports in the Champs elysees, and dancing in the open places and the long walks. With nightfall the illuminations began. A troupe of mountebanks performed on a huge stage a ballet in pantomime, called the "Union of Mars and Flora." There were as many as five hundred performers. There were bands playing in every direction, and food was distributed to the contented mult.i.tude. From the Arc to the Tuileries, from the Tuileries to the Louvre, from the Louvre to the Hotel de Ville, the spectacle was really fairy-like. Napoleon and Marie Louise, starting from Saint Cloud at eight in the evening, made their way, in torchlight, through a countless mult.i.tude. Their approach was announced to the people by the sudden ascent of a balloon, from which fireworks were discharged. At half-past nine they reached the Hotel de Ville. Nearly a thousand persons had gathered in the concert hall, almost three thousand in the record room, the Hall of Saint John, and in the semicircular place in front, opposite the spot, on the left bank of the Seine, where the fireworks were to be set off at a signal of Napoleon and Marie Louise. These fireworks were divided into three parts, representing a military scene, the Temple of Peace, and the Temple of Hymen. In the first there were two forts which soldiers were a.s.saulting, firing their guns amid the sound of trumpets and the rattle of drums. The forts were discharging sh.e.l.ls and bullets, which burst into flame, and were reflected in the water before they fell into the river. When the two forts were captured, they disappeared in a great blaze. Then the ship, the symbol of the city of Paris, appeared and took its station between two columns of light. The decoration changed, and first the Temple of Peace was seen, then that of Hymen--a real pyrotechnic masterpiece. After the fireworks the Emperor and Empress went first into the record room, then into the concert hall, where was sung a cantata, with words by Arnault and music by Mehul, which began with this apostrophe to the Empress:--
"From the throne where our homage rises to you, From the throne where beauty reigns by the side of courage, And Minerva by the side of Mars, On these sh.o.r.es of which love has made you sovereign, On these happy sh.o.r.es adorned by the Seine, Louise, cast thy glance."
After the cantata a ball began. Napoleon did not dance, but Marie Louise did. The first quadrille was thus made up: the Empress and the King of Westphalia, the Queen of Naples and the Viceroy of Italy, Princess Pauline Borghese and Prince Esterhazy, Mademoiselle de Saint-Gilles and M. de Nicola. The second quadrille: the Queen of Westphalia and Prince Borghese, the Princess of Baden and Count Metternich, the Princess Aldobrandini and M. de Montaran, Madame Blaque de Belair and M. Mallet.
The Emperor descended from his throne and walked through the room, exchanging a few words with a great many people. About midnight he withdrew with the Empress. At two o"clock supper was served: at this fifteen hundred ladies were present, and the ball went on till daybreak.
Princess Pauline Borghese gave a very brilliant entertainment June 14, at the castle of Neuilly. At the end of an illuminated lawn appeared the Austrian palace of Laxenburg, and the ballet consisted of dancers arrayed like peasants of the neighborhood of Vienna. June 21, another great ball was given by the Duke of Feltre, the Minister of War. But the finest, the most original, the grandest ball, was that given by the Imperial Guard at the Champ de Mars and the Military School, at that time called the Napoleon quarter. Marie Louise was thoroughly delighted with it; she said she had never seen anything so magnificent. Never had Rome under the Caesars seen a more gorgeous spectacle. For many months the public had been watching the vast preparations for this event. Two wings had been added to the Military School, large enough to hold eight thousand persons. The main courtyard had been transformed into a garden in which were set out numberless orange-trees, shrubs, and flowers. The officers of the Guard, who were models of French politeness, received the ladies at the entrance of this garden, offering each one a bouquet, and escorted them to the galleries which led to the two newly constructed buildings, one of which was the ball-room; the other, the supper-room. The ball-room was shaped like a tent, and the ceiling was decorated with the signs of the Zodiac and allegorical representation of a triumph. A throne was set there, above seven rows of seats. All around the room hung muslin draperies, on which were embroidered gold bees and branches of myrtle and laurel. When the Emperor and Empress appeared at seven o"clock, three thousand women, each with a bouquet in her hand, rose at once. It seemed like a living flower-garden. The wives of the most ill.u.s.trious officers of the Guard, the d.u.c.h.ess of Dalmatia, of Treviso, of Istria, Countess Walter, Dorsenne, Curial, Saint-Sulpice, Lefebore, Desnonettes, Krasenska, Baronesses Kirgener, Lubenska, Guiot, Gros, Delaistre and Lepic, had been chosen to escort the Empress.
Marshal Bessieres, Duke of Istria, presented her with a magnificent bouquet.
Meanwhile the Champ de Mars, which was covered with flags, was filled with three or four hundred thousand spectators, who had a.s.sembled quietly, without crowding, on the terrace, the amphitheatres, and in the walks. When Napoleon and Marie Louise showed themselves on the balcony of the Military School, there broke out loud applause. Afterwards dinner was served to the Imperial family. When that was finished, they gave the signal for the horse and chariot races. Franconi"s equestrian troupe gave performances in the intervals. When all the prizes had been given, a balloon, carrying a woman, Madame Blanchard, made an ascent. She saluted the Imperial pair, waved a flag, threw down flowers, and speedily attained a great height. Then there were fireworks. Amid rockets, bombs, and shooting-stars, two pretty young women walked up and down on the tight rope, like magical apparitions, amid the encircling flames. After the fireworks a ballet was performed by the dancers from the Opera, under the direction of Gardel; it represented the different nations of Europe in their national dress. After the ballet came the ball, which was most animated. Napoleon and Marie Louise left towards midnight, escorted to their carriage by most of the guests, who cheered, and did not return to the ball-room until the Emperor and Empress had gone out of sight. This exceptional entertainment was favored by pleasant weather and a bright night; the moon and the stars seemed to rival the illuminations. The main courtyard, filled with trees and flowers, was like the enchanted garden of Armida, where one walked amid delicious music. At two in the morning the doors of the supper-room were opened, a large bower of gilded trellis work, with Corinthian columns, and a roof covered with frescoes representing groups of children sporting in the air amid flowers and garlands. About fifteen hundred people sat down to table.
The Imperial Guard had every reason to be proud of its entertainment.
The officers, young, brilliant, devoted to pleasure as to glory, found their life more joyous as war threatened to make it short. They displayed the same ardor, the same enthusiasm, in the ball-room as on the battle-field. They loved the smell of flowers as much as the smell of gunpowder. Every form of conquest tempted them, and they revived the customs of chivalry. In the language of the time, there flourished the twofold reign of Mars and Venus. In those heroic days courage was set higher than wealth. The women, with few exceptions, were indifferent to money; they did not think that an honorable scar disfigured a soldier"s face, and the disinterested kindness of a beauty was the reward of bravery.
XVIII.
THE BALL AT THE AUSTRIAN EMBa.s.sY.
The series of grand entertainments which had been given in Paris was to be concluded by a ball, which Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Amba.s.sador, was to give at the Emba.s.sy, July 1, 1810, to the Emperor and Empress; it had been announced that this was to be a marvel of luxury, elegance, and good taste. The Amba.s.sador lived in the rue de la Chaussee d"Antin, in a mansion formerly belonging to the Marchioness of Montesson, widow of the Duke of Orleans, to whom this lady had been united by a morganatic marriage. Great preparations had been made with extraordinary magnificence. Since the ground floor of the house was too small, a large ball-room of wood had been built, reached by a gallery, also of wood, leading from the body of the house. The ceiling of this gallery was covered with varnished paper, decorated and painted; the floor-boards, which were supported on a framework, were raised to the same height as the floors of the house. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling of the ball-room. The sides and the circuit of the gallery were lit by candelabra fastened to the walls. A high platform was reserved for the Imperial family, in the centre of the right-hand side of the ball-room, directly opposite a large door opening on the garden.
Behind the platform was a small door reserved for the sovereigns.
The Amba.s.sador and his wife had staying with them his brother and sister-in-law, Prince Joseph and Princess Pauline Schwarzenberg, who were to help him in doing the honors of the ball.
Napoleon and Marie Louise, who started from Saint Cloud, reached the gates of Paris at quarter to ten; there they got into another carriage, and soon after ten were at the door of the Emba.s.sy, where the Amba.s.sador received them. The Emperor wore over his coat the broad Austrian ribbon of Saint Stephen.
The grand ball was opened; a troupe of musicians in the court of honor sounded a flourish of trumpets at the entrance of Their Majesties, who pa.s.sed through the concert hall into the garden, where they stopped a moment before the Temple of Apollo. There women, dressed to resemble the Muses, sang a joyous chorus. Napoleon and Marie Louise pa.s.sed slowly along a water-walk, where hidden music issued from a subterranean grotto, to a vine-clad arbor adorned with mirrors, monograms, flowers, and wreaths, and listened to a concert of vocal and instrumental music, French and German; then they went further into the garden, stopping before a Temple of Glory, where were four handsome women representing Victory, the muse Clio, and Renown; then trumpets sounded, triumphal songs were sung, and perfumes were burning on golden tripods. Then they turned to see a delightful ballet danced on the greensward, with a view of the Palace of Laxenburg--so dear to Marie Louise--in the background; that done, they entered the wooden gallery just put up before the front of the mansion, and finally entered the ball-room, which was large enough to hold about fifteen hundred people.
It was midnight, and so far everything had gone on without a hitch. The Emperor and Empress seemed delighted; the Amba.s.sador was radiant; every one was enchanted with the magic of the spectacle. The ball was opened with a quadrille, in which the Queen of Naples danced with Prince Esterhazy, and Prince Eugene de Beauharnais with Princess Pauline de Schwarzenberg. When that was over, the Emperor descended from his throne to walk through the room; while the Empress, the Queen of Naples, and the Vice-Queen of Italy remained in their places on the platform.
Napoleon had just come up to Princess Pauline de Schwarzenberg, who had presented to him the princesses, her daughters, when suddenly the flame of a candle set fire to the curtains of a window. Count Dumanoir, the Emperor"s chamberlain, and several officers tried to tear the curtains down; but the flames continued to spread, and in less than three minutes they had reached the ceiling, and all the light decorations which hung from it were ablaze. Count Metternich, who happened to be at the foot of the platform, at once ran up to tell the Empress what had happened, and to persuade her to follow him as soon as possible. As to the Emperor, who was as cool as if he were on the battle-field, he was able to reach the platform to join Marie Louise, and to escape with her to the garden, urging every one to be calm in order to avoid disorder.
Fortunately the means of exit were wide, and the greater part of the guests were able to find refuge in the garden; but, alas! there were many accidents and many victims. It so happened that just when the fire started a great many young girls had left their mothers to dance a schottische; their mothers tried to find them, and they tried to find their mothers, amid wild shrieks and the most desperate confusion. Wives called for their husbands, parents for their children. The officers of the Imperial Guard gathered about Napoleon with drawn swords, for at first they suspected treachery and waited for some further development of a malicious plot. Prince Schwarzenberg, who did not leave the Emperor, said to him: "I know how this room is built; it is doomed; but there are so many exits that every one can escape. Sire, I shall cover you with my body." Napoleon, under his protection, reached the platform with composure, took the Empress by the hand, and succeeded in going out with her. They pa.s.sed through the garden, got into a carriage, and drove to the Place Louis XV., where they separated, the Empress pushing on to Saint Cloud, while the Emperor, retracing his steps, went back to the Austrian Emba.s.sy, where he hoped to be able to help extinguish the fire.
The Amba.s.sador, who had accompanied Napoleon and Marie Louise to their carriage, went back to the house, then a hideous scene of destruction. A storm had arisen, and a violent wind had spread the ravaging flames in every direction. The Queen of Westphalia had fainted and had been rescued by Count Metternich; the Queen of Naples, Prince Eugene, and his wife, who was in a delicate condition, had remained on the platform. The Queen tried to escape by the main door, by which the Emperor and the Empress had left; but this was speedily so blocked up by the crowd that she, who was behind every one, would certainly have been caught by the flames, like many others, had it not been for the a.s.sistance of the Grand Duke of Wurzburg and of Marshal Marcey, who seized her and forced a way for her. Prince Eugene saw the chandelier fall, and the pa.s.sage across the room wholly blocked; but, fortunately, he noticed the little door which led into the house, and through that he escaped with his wife. The Amba.s.sador beheld the calamity with despair. His wife was brought out senseless, but untouched by the flames. He saw his brother, Prince Joseph de Schwarzenberg, running to and fro, wild with grief and disquiet; he was looking for his wife, Princess Pauline de Schwarzenberg, and could not find her. What had become of the unhappy mother? When the fire broke out, knowing her eldest daughter, Eleonore, to be safe, she had run to the a.s.sistance of her second daughter, Pauline, who was dancing the schottische, and led her speedily to the steps of the entrance, where the crowd was surging amid the flames. A moment more, and mother and daughter were safe: they had but a few steps to take to be on the staircase and then in the garden, but suddenly a falling beam separated mother and child, and the staircase broke down beneath the weight of the struggling crowd. Missing her daughter, the courageous princess plunged once more into the ballroom. No one knew what had become of her; in the cruel, heart-wringing uncertainty the stern face of the Amba.s.sador was wet with tears.
Napoleon returned to the Emba.s.sy, and directing everything, supervising everything as on a battlefield, there he stayed more than two hours, exposed to a heavy rain which began after the fire, and to all the heat and smoke. Alone, unguarded, evidently anxious to dispel all misinterpretation which malevolence could draw from the unhappy event, he displayed great energy and perfect self-possession.
It was not till four in the morning that he returned to Saint Cloud, where he had been most anxiously awaited. "From the time that the Empress arrived," we read in Constant"s Memoirs, "we had felt the keenest anxiety; every one in the palace had been most uneasy about the Emperor. At last he arrived, unharmed, but very tired; his dress in disorder, his face scorched, his clothes and stockings all blackened and singed by the fire. He went straight to the Empress"s room, to console her for the fright she had had; then he went to his own room, flung his hat on the bed, dropped into an easy-chair, saying, "Heavens! what a festivity!" I noticed that his hands were all blackened; he had lost his gloves at the fire. He was overwhelmed with sadness, and he spoke with an emotion such as I had seen in him only two or three times in his life, and never about his own misfortunes. I remember that he expressed a fear that the terrible event of that night betokened future calamities. Three years later, in the Russian campaign, he was told one day that Prince Schwarzenberg"s army corps had been destroyed, and that the Prince himself had perished. It happened that the news was false; but when it was brought to the Emperor, he said, as if in accordance with a thought that had long haunted him, "It was he then whom that evil omen threatened!""
The morning of the next day Napoleon sent his pages to learn the news.
The accounts they brought back were most gloomy: the Princess de la Leyen had died from her injuries; General Touzart was in a desperate condition, as well as his wife and daughter, who, in fact, died the same day. Prince Kourakine, the Russian Amba.s.sador, was seriously injured; he had made a misstep on the staircase leading to the garden, and had fallen senseless into the flames, which, fortunately, had been unable to get through his coat of cloth of gold and the decorations which covered him like a cuira.s.s; nevertheless, it was many months before he recovered. "Prince Joseph de Schwarzenberg," says the _Moniteur_ of July 3, 1810, "spent the night in looking for his wife, whom he could not find at the Emba.s.sy or at Madame Metternich"s. He was still ignorant of his loss when at daybreak there was found in the ball-room a corpse which Dr. Gall thought that he recognized as that of the Princess Pauline de Schwarzenberg. Further doubt was impossible when her jewels with her children"s initials, which she wore about her neck, were recognized. Princess Pauline de Schwarzenberg was the daughter of the Senator von Avenberg, and the mother of eight children. She was as renowned for her personal charms as for the distinction of her mind and heart. The act of devotion which cost her her life shows how much her loss is to be regretted, for death was certain amid the fury of the flames. Only a mother would have dared to face the danger."
The _Moniteur_ adds to this pathetic account: "The Austrian Amba.s.sador during the whole night displayed the zeal, the activity, the calmness, and the presence of mind to be expected of him. The members of the Emba.s.sy and the Austrians who were present were tireless in their courage and devotion. The public has been most grateful to the Amba.s.sador for insisting on accompanying the Emperor and the Empress to their carriage, without regard to the dangers to which his family was exposed. The Emperor left the spot at about three in the morning. During the rest of the night he sent several times for information about the fate of the Princess Schwarzenberg. It was not until five o"clock that he received word of her death. His Majesty, who held this princess in the highest esteem, sincerely regrets her sad lot. The Empress exhibited the most perfect calmness throughout the evening. When she heard this morning of the death of Princess Pauline de Schwarzenberg, she burst into tears."