Part 17

XXII.

SAINT CLOUD AND TRIANON.

The Emperor had determined that there could not be too much rejoicing at his son's baptism; consequently he gave an entertainment himself, June 23,1811, in the palace and park of Saint Cloud. The palace, with its magnificent halls, its drawing-rooms of Mars, Venus, Truth, Mercury, and Aurora, its Gallery of Apollo, and Room of Diana, adorned with Mignard's frescoes; the park, with its fine trees, its wonderful stretches, its greensward, and abundant flowers; the two grand views from the upper windows, one towards Paris, the other towards the garden; the waterfalls, set in a tasteful frame, and rushing down step by step, breaking into a white foam, sparkling in the sunlight or with the reflection of a thousand torches, formed a marvellous setting for a festival both by night and by day. More than three hundred thousand persons went to Saint Cloud; they began to arrive in the morning, and filled every avenue, covered every bit of rising ground. Food was publicly distributed; the fountains ran wine. Games and sports of all kinds were played, and the Imperial Guard gave an open-air banquet to the garrison of Paris.

At six in the evening Napoleon and Marie Louise drove in an open barouche through the park, without guard or escort, to the great delight of the applauding multitude. The orange house, which had been stripped of its contents for the decoration of the front of the palace, was adorned with stuffs of fine colors. Temples and kiosks had been set up in the shrubbery. At nightfall six illuminated launches, manned by sailors of the Imperial Guard, performed various evolutions and discharged fireworks, which made a brilliant show upon the river. Meanwhile the illuminations began throughout the park, along the terraces, and the amphitheatre, and in the palace. It was a most fairy-like sight; the large cascade with its half-lying statues of the Seine and the Loire; the lower cascade beneath; the fountain rising twenty-seven metres; the large square basin with the ten little shell-shaped basins and the nine fountains spurting from gilded masques; the green lawns, the flower-beds, the shrubbery,--all lit up by the blazing fireworks. At nine o'clock Madame Blanchard went up in a balloon, discharging fireworks from the car, which formed a starlike crown set at a great height; she seemed like a magician in a fiery chariot. Fireworks were then set off by the artillery of the Imperial Guard from the middle of the Plain of Boulogne; they were visible from Paris as from Saint Cloud, and from all the hills bordering the Seine from Calvaire to Meudon. Next to the row of columns opened the illuminated garden, with waterfalls, trees, and porticoes, forming a most brilliant spectacle. The Emperor and Empress walked through the park, and Marie Louise was continually reminded of her beloved Austria, of Schoenbrunn, of the Burg, of Laxenburg, by the wonderful panorama. There were many bands stationed among the trees, playing waltzes, and dancers from the opera, dressed as German shepherds and shepherdesses, were dancing. An interlude, "The Village Festival," words by Étienne, set to music by Nicolo, was given in the open air, on the grass. When the Empress came to a column supporting a basket of flowers, a dove alit at her feet and offered her an ingenious motto.

The weather had been tolerably pleasant all day; but it became stormy in the evening; the air grew heavy: there could be seen neither moon nor stars. There had just been illuminated, opposite the grand cascade, a model of the palace intended for the King of Rome,--this palace the Emperor meant to build on the high ground of Chaillot, with the Bois de Boulogne for its park,--when suddenly the storm that had been slowly gathering burst upon the heads of the vast crowd in the park. There were there deputations from all the large towns of the vast empire which reached from Cuxhaven to Rome; the men in costly velvet coats, the women in dresses of embroidered silk. The Emperor at the moment happened to be talking in the doorway between the drawing-room and the garden; near him was the Mayor of Lyons, to whom he said, "I am going to benefit your manufactures." Then he remained standing in the doorway. The courtiers received the shower with bare heads and smiling faces. Possibly some might have said that the rain of Saint Cloud, like the rain of Marly, did not wet.

Of course no one had an umbrella. Prince Aldobrandini, the Empress's First Equerry, managed to procure one, which he held over her. Count Rémusat found another, and for an hour he was coming and going, between the park and the palace, to bring as many ladies as possible under shelter. The entertainment could not go on; every one was wet through. The musicians could not play on their dripping instruments. The Emperor and the Empress withdrew at eleven, and both the court and the people had gloomy memories of this festivity which began so well and ended so badly. Superstitious and ill-disposed persons fancied that they saw an evil omen in this; they recalled the disastrous ball at the Austrian Embassy, and said that the storm broke just at the very moment when the palace of the King of Rome was illuminated. But what difference could a simple shower make to a people accustomed to streams of blood?

August 15, 1811, there was a brilliant celebration at Saint Cloud and Paris, as well as throughout the Empire, of the festival of the great and the small Napoleon. August 25 was the birthday of the Empress Marie Louise, and this was celebrated at the two Trianons, which were full of memories of Louis XIV. and of Marie Antoinette. The Grand Trianon, graceful and majestic, though but a single story high, and the Little Trianon, charming, though but a simple small square, of no regal aspect, were enchanted palaces on Marie Louise's birthday. The two buildings, the belvedere, the little lakes, the island and Temple of Love, the village, the octagonal pavilion, the theatre, were all aglow. It seemed as if Marie Antoinette were alive again, and to the Empress Delille's lines could have applied as well as to the Queen:--

"Like its August and youthful deity, Trianon combines grace with majesty: For her it adorns itself, is by her adorned."

It was only twenty-two years since Marie Antoinette had been there, and many of the lords and ladies who adorned Napoleon's court as they had adorned that of Louis XVI. could not see without emotion this fairy-like recall of the brilliant days of the old régime. The French nobility had an opportunity to make many reflections on revisiting the Little Trianon which aroused many memories. It was less than eighteen years since there had perished on the scaffold the charming sovereign who had been the idol, the goddess, of this little temple; and now new festivities were beginning; another Austrian archduchess occupied the place of the martyred Queen. There was the Swiss village, of which Louis XVI. had been the miller, the Count of Provence the schoolmaster, the Count of Artois the gamekeeper, the village with its merry mill, the dairy where the cream filled porphyry vessels on marble tables, the laundry where the clothes were beaten with ebony sticks, the granary to which led mahogany ladders, the sheep-house where the sheep were shorn with golden shears. They saw once more the grass sprinkled with flowers, the clear water, the trees of all colors from dark green to cherry-red; larches and pink acacias, cedars of Lebanon, sophoras from China, poplars from Athens, and they said that Time, which shatters a sceptre, respects a shrub. Everything else had changed; the garden was still the same.

All day long the gloomy solitude of Versailles had been crowded anew as if by magic. A countless multitude thronged its long, wide avenues, which had been almost deserted since October, 1789. The festivities of the former monarchy appeared to have begun again. At three in the afternoon a rather heavy shower had fallen, and it seemed as if the day and evening would end gloomily; but on the contrary, the rain was but brief and only freshened the air, and made the festival pleasanter. The setting sun lit up the great king's town, and at night many-colored lamps decorated the Grand Trianon. Six hundred women in rich dresses, and ablaze with jewelry, gathered in the gallery of that palace. The Empress spoke to many of them, and it was noticed how well she had become acquainted with French society, although she had been in the country but fifteen months; and with what kindness and dignity she addressed them.

Then they went to the theatre of the Little Trianon, a perfect jewel, a gem, with its two Ionic columns, its pediment in which Love is holding a lyre and a laurel wreath; and its ceiling representing Olympus, the work of Lagrenée; and its curtain, on which are two nymphs supporting Marie Antoinette's coat-of-arms. It was there that, August 19, 1785, the Queen played Rosina, in "The Barber of Seville," and that the Count of Artois uttered those ominous words as Figaro, "I try to laugh at everything, lest I should have to weep at everything." Before Napoleon and Marie Louise there was given a piece composed for the occasion by Alissan de Chazet: it was called "The Gardener of Schoenbrunn." After it was a pretty ballet given by the dancers of the Opera.

When this was over, the Emperor and Empress walked through the gardens of the Little Trianon, which were illuminated. Napoleon, with his hat in his hand, gave his arm to Marie Louise. They visited the island and the marble Temple of Love, in which is Bouchardon's statue of Love carving his bow into the club of Hercules. There was soft music from concealed performers, which seemed to rise from the bottom of the lake, on which floated illuminated boats full of children disguised as cupids. Then they walked further in the garden, and watched a tableau vivant, representing Flemish peasants. This was succeeded by groups representing the people of the different provinces of the Empire in their national dress, from the Tiber to the North Sea. The celebration ended with a supper in the gallery of the Grand Trianon. All those who had known the place in the old régime agreed that the festival was a perfect success; and Marie Louise, who was becoming more and more at home in France, was sure that her birthday had never been celebrated with anything like such magnificence.

XXIII.

THE TRIP TO HOLLAND.

A short time after Wagram Napoleon had been heard, in a levee at which his generals were present, to lament the bloody campaigns in which he always lost some of his early companions. "I have been a soldier long enough," he went on; "it's time for me to be a king." During 1811 he seemed faithful to this new programme. The soldier had become a monarch, and the hero of so many battles seemed to be desirous of the glories of peace. He determined to make a trip in Belgium and Holland and along the banks of the Rhine, where he should see for himself what the happiness of the people required. The Empress made the journey with him, but Napoleon started from Compiègne without her, September 19; she was to join him on the 30th at Antwerp. At this time she was so attached to him that she could not endure a separation of only a few days, and she wrote to her father: "My husband has left to-night to go to the island of Walcheren, which has the worst climate in the world, so that I could not go with him, for which I am extremely sorry." While the Emperor was visiting Boulogne, Ostend, and Flushing, the Queen made her way, with a magnificent court, to Belgium. She left Compiègne, September 22, and took up her residence at the castle at Laeken, near Brussels. She often visited the Belgian capital, which then was only the chief town of a French department,--the department of the Dyle. Napoleon made a great point of her appearing in all splendor in the provinces which had previously been governed by the house of Austria. She went to the theatre, where she was warmly greeted, and purchased a hundred and fifty thousand francs' worth of lace to revive the manufactures of the city. September 30 she joined her husband at Antwerp. The Moniteur thus spoke of the way the Emperor had transformed this city: "Antwerp may be considered as a fortress of the rank of Metz and Strasbourg. The work which has been done there is enormous. On the left bank of the Scheldt, where two years ago there was only a redoubt, there has risen a city twelve thousand feet long, with eight bastions.... The view from the dockyard is unparalleled; twenty-one men-of-war, eight of them three-deckers, are building. The arsenal is fully provided with provisions of all sorts brought down the Rhine and the Meuse.

"Seven years ago," continues the Moniteur, "there was not a single quay in Antwerp, and the houses came down to the river's edge. To-day, in the place of these houses, are superb quays, of service to the commerce and to the defence of the place. Six years ago there was no basin, but only a few canals where boats drawing ten or twelve feet could scarcely enter. To-day there is a basin twenty-six feet deep at the bank, able to hold ships-of-the-line, with a lock for the admission of ships carrying a hundred and twenty guns."

The formal entrance into Amsterdam took place October 9, 1811. The former capital of Holland was merely the chief town of a French department,--the department of the Zuyder Zee. The Dutch were suffering a good deal from the Embargo, and sorely missed King Louis Bonaparte, who had in vain tried to alleviate their sufferings. When they came under the dominion of the Emperor, he had appointed Lebrun, Duke of Piacenza, their governor general. Of him, Count Beugnot says in his Memoirs, "He was doubtless a superior man, but he found it easier to translate Homer and Tasso, and to treat with wonderful ease the most difficult questions of political economy, than to console a Dutchman for the loss of ten florins."

The discontent of the Dutch only strengthened Napoleon's desire to please and win them. "It seemed at that time," M. Beugnot goes on, "as if Heaven had given him every means of securing happiness. A son had just been born to him, whose future the poets were justified in foretelling in their own way. The child who inspired the Mantuan poet with the idyl, or rather with the magnificent prophecy, Sicelides Musae, etc., was but an humble creature by the side of this infant, who to the most impressive pride of race added enormous, newly acquired glory, such as the world had never seen." The happy Emperor fancied that by showing himself with the mother of the King of Rome to the Dutch and Germans, he should silence their complaints, wipe out their memories of national independence, and arouse an enthusiasm that would make them forget their sufferings and losses. Their welcome was of a sort to confirm him in this belief. The peaceful populace of Amsterdam forgot their usual phlegm, and cheered the mighty monarch and his young wife. The Empress entered the city in a gilded carriage with glass sides, and she was met by a guard of honor composed of young men belonging to the first families of Holland. The Emperor followed on horseback, surrounded by a brilliant staff. Their stay at Amsterdam was marked by extraordinary pomp; the company of the Théâtre Français was brought thither from Paris, and Talma appeared as Bayard and as Orosmane. The court made a stay of a fortnight, the Emperor making short excursions to Helder, one of his creations, to Texel, and to the dykes of Medemblik, which protect the country against the Zuyder Zee.

General de Ségur, who went on the journey, thus describes it: "It might naturally be supposed, that in going through Holland, after the last two attempted assassinations, Napoleon would have taken precautions against such frequent attacks; but, far from it, he was full of confidence, and went about alone among these worst victims of the continental system, mingling every day with the dense crowd that gathered about him. His sole thought was to study their needs, their manners, and habits, anxious to see for himself and trusting thoroughly in them. These northern people hide warm hearts beneath a cold exterior; they are impressed by greatness, and give it their confidence. Their feelings are slow, but for that reason surer when once aroused. The Emperor's enormous fame had preceded him; and the appearance among them of this genius, all fire and flame, who had come, as he said, to adopt them, warmed their phlegmatic nature. They were at once filled with admiration; his presence, his trust in them, his consoling and encouraging words, the good works at once begun by his active and able administration, filled them with enthusiasm."

During the three days of the Emperor's absence Marie Louise visited the neighborhood of Amsterdam. She went to the village of Broek, which lies a league from the port, on the shores of a little basin surrounded with flowers and grass, and is in communication with the Zuyder Zee by means of a small canal. This village is famous as a perfect model of the attractive luxury and the over-zealous neatness of the Dutch. It is of a circular shape. The houses, of wood and one story high, are built around and upon a lake, and are decorated outside with frescoes. Through the window-glass, which is remarkably clear, it is easy to see the curtains of Chinese figured silk or of Indian stuff. Within the houses are large Gothic sideboards, full of costly Japanese porcelain. There are no signs of use or of wear upon the furniture; every house looks as if it were the house of the Sleeping Beauty. There are no barns, or stables, or granaries, or kitchens. Everything connected with animals is banished from this fairy-like enclosure. Posts at the ends of every street bar the way against carriages. The pavement is in mosaic, and is covered with a fine sand, on which are designs of flowers. The inhabitants carry their sense of neatness so far that they compel every visitor to take off his shoes and put on slippers on entering a house. One day, when the Emperor Joseph II. happened to appear in a pair of boots before one of these curious houses, he was told that he would have to take them off before he could go in. "I am the Emperor," he said. "Well, if you were the burgomaster of Amsterdam, you couldn't come in with boots on," was the reply. Another time Hortense, then Queen of Holland, was not allowed to enter one of the houses, and King Louis approved, because the Queen had not sent word that she was coming.

When Marie Louise visited this famous village, the burgomaster, in view of the importance of the occasion, consented to break the rigid rules and to permit the Imperial carriage to drive over the mosaic pavement to his house, where he presented his respects to the Empress. At this house, as in every one in the village, there are two doors,--one for daily use, the other opened only for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. This door, which is called the fatal door, opens into a room which is always kept shut except on these three occasions. "The Empress," says M. de Bausset, "asked to have the fatal door opened. We crossed the threshold with gratified vanity, in the presence of many inhabitants, who feared to follow us, but who were almost tempted to admire the ease and courage with which we went in and out. After visiting, admiring, and praising everything, we left these worthy people delighted with the touching graces and amiable kindness of their young sovereign."

The Emperor and Empress visited Saardam, where Peter the Great spent ten months as a workman, to study shipbuilding. Napoleon fell into meditation before the hut of the famous Czar, as he had done before the tomb of Frederick the Great. "That is the noblest monument in Holland!" he said; and in memory of Peter the Great he ordered Saardam to be made a city.

Napoleon and Marie Louise also spent a few hours at Harlem, a half-Gothic, half-Japanese town, celebrated by the passion of its inhabitants for flowers, especially for tulips. October 26, they arrived at Rotterdam, at Loo on the 27th, and spent the night of the 28th at The Hague, whence they went to visit the banks of the Rhine. The Emperor carried away with him a most favorable impression of the Dutch, whose seriousness, morality, love of order, and industry had continually struck him, so that he shared his brother Louis's partiality for a nation as interesting in the present as in the past.

November 2, Napoleon and his wife reached Düsseldorf. This pretty town, which is picturesquely placed at the junction of the Düssel with the Rhine, was at that time the capital of the Grand Duchy of Berg, and had been under the rule of Murat before he was appointed King of Naples; on this visit the Emperor assigned it to the oldest son of Louis Bonaparte. Count Beugnot was then ruling the principality, which contained less than a million inhabitants. He it was who said in his curious and witty Memoirs: "How easy it would have been to secure the allegiance of the Germans, who are unable to withstand the attraction of military glory, for whom an oath of allegiance is a mere nothing, and who felt for France an affection which we cruelly drove out of them!... Germany, which always admires the marvellous, long preserved its admiration for the Emperor. At that time this was so general, that a breath would have blown over the Prussian monarchy, which neither the armies nor the memories of the great Frederick, together with the invincible legion of the successor of Peter the Great, could defend."

At Düsseldorf, Napoleon, in accordance with his usual custom, received all the authorities, civil and military, as well as representatives of all sects. Among these last was an old white-bearded rabbi a hundred years old, who was so anxious to see the Emperor that he had himself carried to the reception. He entered, supported on one side by the parish priest, on the other, by the Protestant clergyman. This union of the three creeds in homage to their sovereign did not displease the Emperor, strange as it was. Count Beugnot's Memoirs must be consulted for a full account of the activity, the interest in details, the minuteness of the administrative investigations which, at Düsseldorf as everywhere else, characterized Napoleon in these laborious journeys, on which, under pretext of seeking distraction, he kept himself in almost as active movement as if he were at war. The Count who once played whist at Düsseldorf with Marie Louise for his partner, against the Duchess of Montebello and the Prince of Neufchâtel, says in speaking of the occasion: "As often happens, the game was carelessly played; all watched the cards only with their eyes, and gave their attention to what was going forward about the table, to which the Emperor came every few minutes to say a few pleasant words to the Empress or to joke with the Prince of Neufchâtel and me. I was too busy, both during the dinner and while we were playing, to make any study of the Empress's tastes or to form from them a judgment about her character. The journey had been long; she seemed tired and out of sorts. She answered the Emperor only in monosyllables, and the other by a somewhat monotonous nod of the head. I may be mistaken, but I am inclined to believe that Her Majesty is not free from the awe which her August husband inspires in all who approach him."

After resting for two days at Düsseldorf, Napoleon and Marie Louise went on to Cologne, when they visited the Chapel of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and a grand Te Deum was sung in the famous Cathedral, They returned by Liège, Givet, Mézières, and Compiègne, reaching Saint Cloud after an absence of nearly three months,--the longest visit that the Emperor had made in the provinces of either the old or the new France. Everywhere he had met with the expression of two distinct but somewhat different sentiments: for the Empress, an affectionate respect; for himself, the sort of violent sensation that a man who is a living wonder always produces. XXIV.

NAPOLEON AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER.

At the beginning of 1812 Napoleon had reached the height of his power. Before we watch his decline, it may be well to consider him at the summit of his fortune, in the fulness of his force, might, and glory. In his career there were two distinctly marked periods,--the democratic and the aristocratic. In the early days of the Empire the first one had not yet come to an end. The coins of that time still bore the stamp, "French Republic. Napoleon Emperor." He himself resembled Caesar rather than Charlemagne: he granted no hereditary titles, and associated with but few of the émigrés; he was still, in many ways, a man of the Revolution. In 1812, on the other hand, he had given his authority a sort of feudal character, and revived many points of resemblance with the Carlovingian epoch. Charlemagne had become his model, his ideal. The saviour of the Convention, the friend of the young Robespierre, was busily introducing much of the imperial and military splendor of the Middle Ages. The continental sovereigns treated him with so much consideration that he regarded himself as their superior rather than as an equal. He called them his brothers; but he thought that he was more than a brother--something like the head of a family of kings. The Kings of Bavaria, of Würtemberg, of Saxony, of Spain, of Naples, of Westphalia, who all owed their crowns to him, were indeed his subordinates. As the Princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, the vassals of their protector, they despatched their contingents to him with as much zeal and punctuality as if they had been plain prefects of the Empire.