Chapter XVII: Conclusion

THE Memoirs of my grandmother came to an end here, and general regret will, no doubt, be felt that she was prevented by death from continuing them, at any rate so far as the divorce from the Emperor, which, from the very beginning, hangs threateningly over the head of the fascinating, lovable, and yet somewhat uninteresting Josephine. No one can supply what is wanting here; even the correspondence of the author affords little political information respecting the succeeding period, and during the latter part of her life she seldom spoke of what she had witnessed or endured. My father entertained at times the idea of continuing her narrative, by putting together what he had heard from his parents, anecdotes of expressions of their opinions in the last days of the Empire, and what he himself knew concerning their lives. He did not carry out his plan in its entirety, nor did he leave anything on the subject complete. His notes, however, seem to me to be valuable, and give the ending of the great drama which has been described in the foregoing pages. It will be interesting to read them as a continuation of the Memoirs, which they complete, although he has recorded his opinions concerning the latter days of the Empire, and the period when he himself entered political life, in a more extensive work. His political views and clear definition of the conduct of officials and of citizens in times of difficulty deserves to be made known. I have added this chapter to the Memoirs, and published the notes of which I speak in their original unstudied form, confining myself to the slight modifications necessary to make the narrative succinct and clear.

The Spanish sovereigns arrived at Bayonne in May, 1808. The Emperor dispatched them to Fontainebleau, and sent Ferdinand VII. to Valençay, an estate belonging to M. de Talleyrand. Then he himself returned, after having traveled through the southern and western departments, and made a political journey into La Vendée, where his presence produced a great effect. He reached Paris about the middle of August. Count de Rémusat writes:

“My father, who was then First Chamberlain, was appointed to
receive the Spanish Bourbons at Fontainebleau. He accomplished
his task with the attention and courtesy habitual to him.
Although on his return he gave us an account which conveyed no
exalted idea of the King, the Queen, or the Prince of the Peace,
who accompanied them, he had treated these dethroned Princes
with the respect due to rank and misfortune. It would seem that
some of the other Court officials had behaved in a different
fashion, rather from ignorance than from ill feeling. Charles
IV. noticed this, and said, ‘Rémusat, at any rate, knows that I
am a Bourbon.’

“M. de Talleyrand happened to be actually staying at Valençay
when the Emperor sent him orders to proceed thither, with an
evident intention of committing him to the Spanish affair, to
receive the three Infantes. He was not altogether pleased with
the task, nor on his return did he refrain from sarcastic
remarks concerning these strange descendants of Louis XIV. He
used to tell us that they bought children’s toys at all the
booths at the neighboring fairs, and when a poor person begged
an alms of them they would give him a doll. He afterward accused
them of dilapidations at Valençay, and cleverly mentioned the
fact to Louis XVIII., who, being desirous to dismiss him from
Court, while he had not the courage to order him to go, took
occasion to praise the beauty and splendor of his seat at
Valençay. ‘Yes, it is pretty fair,’ he said, ‘but the Spanish
Princes entirely spoiled it with the fireworks on St. Napoleon’s
Day.’

“Although M. de Talleyrand was aware that his position with the
Emperor was altered, yet he found Bonaparte when he joined him
well disposed and inclined to trust him. There was no
perceptible cloud between them. The Emperor had need of him for
the conference at Erfurt, to which they went together at the end
of September. My father was in attendance on the Emperor. The
letters which he doubtless wrote thence to my mother have not
been found; but their correspondence was so strictly watched,
and must therefore have been so reserved, that its loss is, I
fancy, of little importance. My father’s general letters
referred to the good understanding between the two Emperors,
their mutual finessing, and the fine manners of the Emperor
Alexander.

“M. de Talleyrand composed a narrative of this Erfurt
conference, which he was in the habit of reading aloud. He used
to boast, on his return, that as the two Emperors entered their
respective carriages, each about to journey in a different
direction, he had said to Alexander, while attending him, ‘If
you could only get into the wrong carriage!’ He had discerned
some fine qualities in the Czar, and had endeavored to win
favor, by which he profited in 1814; but, at the time of which I
am writing, he looked on a Russian alliance as a merely
accidental necessity during a war with England, and he
persistently held that friendship with Austria, which would
eventually become a basis for an alliance with England, was the
true system for France in Europe. His conduct of political
affairs, whether at the time of Napoleon’s marriage, or in 1814,
in 1815, or, again, in the reign of Louis Philippe, was always
consistent with this theory. He often spoke of it to my mother.

“My mother, in order to complete the history of the year 1808,
would have had to narrate, first, the Erfurt conference,
according to the narratives of M. de Talleyrand and of my
father; and, secondly, the reaction of the Spanish affair on the
Court of the Tuileries and on Parisian society. The Royalist
section of the Court and society was deeply moved by the
presence of the ancient Bourbons at Fontainebleau. Here, I
think, she would have placed the disgrace and exile of Mme. de
Chevreuse.

“The Emperor came back from Erfurt in October, but he merely
passed through Paris, and started immediately for Spain, whence
he returned at the beginning of 1809, after an indecisive
campaign.

“Public opinion was far from favorable to his policy. For the
first time the possibility of his loss had occurred to the minds
of men, especially of his sudden death in the course of a war in
which a motive of patriotism might nerve an assassin’s hand.
Various reports, partly loyal and partly malicious, had made the
progress of disapprobation and discontent known to him.
Talleyrand and Fouché had not hesitated to confirm those
reports. The former, especially, was always bold, and even
imprudent, as are all men who are proud of their powers of
conversation and believe in them as in a force. Fouché, who was
more reserved, or less often quoted in society, probably went
further in fact. After his positive fashion, he had been
practically considering the hypothesis of the opening up of the
Imperial succession, and this consideration had brought him
nearer to M. de Talleyrand’s opinions.

“The Emperor returned in an angry mood, and vented his
irritation on the Court, and especially at the Ministerial
Council, in the celebrated scene in which he dismissed M. de
Talleyrand from his post of Grand Chamberlain, and put M. de
Montesquiou in his place.

“That important functionaries of the Empire, such as Talleyrand
and Fouché, as well as other less prominent persons, should have
behaved as they did on this occasion, has been severely
commented on. I am ready to admit that vanity and talkativeness
may have led Talleyrand and Fouché to say more than was prudent;
but I maintain that, under an absolute government, it is
necessary that men holding important offices should, in the case
of public danger, or on perceiving that affairs are being badly
directed, not be afraid to encourage, by a prudent opposition,
the moral resistance which alone can slacken or even divert the
mistaken course of authority. Still more, if they foresee the
possibility of disaster, against which no preparations have been
made, they should take thought concerning what may yet be done.
That the pride of absolute power should be mortified, that
endeavors should be made to overcome and to suppress that
resistance when it is too isolated to avail, I understand. But
it would be none the less a boon to the state and for the ruler,
if this opposition were sufficiently powerful to oblige him to
modify his plans and to reform his life.

“With regard to the case in point, let us suppose that, instead
of imputing the disapprobation of Talleyrand or of Fouché to
intrigue or treason, Napoleon had received reports from Dubois,
or others who had presented it as a proof of the universal
discontent; that his Prefect of Police, himself sharing them,
had pointed out to him that these sentiments were felt and
expressed by Cambacérès, by Maret, by Caulaincourt, by Murat,
lastly by the Due de Gaëta, whom Thiers quotes on this
occasion—in short, by every important personage in the Court
and the Government—would the service rendered to the Emperor
have been an evil one? And would not this unanimous opposition
have been the only means likely to enlighten him, to arrest his
steps, to turn him from the way of perdition at a period when it
was not yet too late?

“As to the reproach addressed to Talleyrand or others, that they
censured the Government after having approved and served it,
that is a natural one in the mouth of Napoleon, who, moreover,
did not hesitate to exaggerate it by falsehood. But in itself it
is foolish; otherwise all honest men must hold themselves
forbidden, because they have once belonged to a certain
government, because they have formerly supported, cloaked, or
even justified its faults, either in error or from weakness, to
grow wiser as dangers thicken and circumstances become
developed. Unless we are resolved on unceasing opposition or on
unlimited submission, a time must come when we no longer approve
what we approved yesterday, when we feel bound to speak although
hitherto we have been silent, and when, drawbacks striking us
more forcibly than advantages, we recognize defects which we had
hitherto endeavored or pretended to ignore, and faults which for
a long time we have palliated! After all, this is what happened
in France with regard to Napoleon, and the change took place in
the mind of officials and citizens alike, except when the former
were blinded by servility or corrupted by a base ambition.

“In our own modest sphere we never had to decide under the
Empire, except upon the direction of our wishes and feelings,
for we never took any part in politics; yet we had to solve for
ourselves that question which continually recurs to me when I
re-peruse the Memoirs or the letters in which my mother has
preserved her impressions and her thoughts.

“My mother would have had to allude, at any rate indirectly, to
this grave subject in narrating the disgrace of M. de
Talleyrand. She saw him, at that time, at least as often as
formerly; she heard his own statements. Nothing was better known
just then to the public than the cold silence (equally far
removed from weakness and from insolence) with which, leaning
against a console on account of his lameness, he listened to the
Emperor’s philippic. As is the custom under absolute monarchy,
he swallowed the affront, and continued to present himself at
Court with a coolness which was not to be mistaken for humility;
and I have no recollection that his attitude under the Empire
was ever accused of weakness from that day forth. It must, of
course, be understood that the rules of the point of honor are
not in this case as they are understood in a free country, nor
the philosophic laws of moral dignity as they are understood
outside the world of courts and politics.

“My mother would, after this, have had to relate our own little
episode in the drama. I am not sure whether the Emperor, on his
arrival, felt or showed any displeasure toward my father. I do
not know whether it was not subsequent reports which caused our
disgrace. In any case, my father did not become immediately
aware of the truth, either because it was so far from his
thoughts that he suspected nothing, or because the Emperor did
not think of him at first. He was a friend of M. de
Talleyrand’s, and in his confidence up to a certain point: this
in itself was a motive for suspicion and a cause of disfavor. We
had written no letter and taken no step that could tell against
us, and I remember that even our speech was very guarded, and
that, could the police spies have witnessed the interviews with
M. de Talleyrand in my mother’s little drawing-room, where my
parents habitually received him alone, they could have
discovered nothing whereon to found a police report. Such
reports were made, however; my father felt no doubt about that,
although the Emperor never displayed his resentment by any
outbreak, nor did he even enter into any serious explanation.
But he acted toward him with a cold malevolence and harshness
which made his service intolerable. Thenceforth my parents felt
themselves in a painful position with the sovereign, which
might, perhaps, lead to their quitting the Court.

“There was no amelioration in this state of things when
Napoleon, who had gone to Germany in April, 1809, came back to
Fontainebleau on the 6th of October, the conqueror of Wagram,
and proud of the peace just signed at Vienna. Victories, however
dearly bought, did not make him more generous or kindly. He was
still performing work important enough to be vain of his power,
and, if it had been put to severe tests, that was a stronger
reason why he desired it to be respected. However, he found, in
reverting to the recent souvenir of the descent of the English
upon Walcheren, a state of things in Spain quite unsatisfactory,
a quarrel with the Holy See pushed to its last extremities, and
public opinion more restless about his inclination for war than
reassured by his victories—defiant, sad, even critical, and
besetting with its suspicions the man whom it had so long
environed with its fallacies.

“This time Fouché was the object of his thoughts. Fouché had
acted in his own way at the moment of the descent of the
English. He had assumed authority, he had made an appeal to
public sentiment, he had reorganized the national guard, and
employed Bernadotte on our side. Everything in these
proceedings, both the conception and the details, had greatly
displeased the Emperor. All his ill-temper was concentrated upon
Fouché; and, besides, as he had come back resolved upon the
divorce, it was difficult to hold M. de Talleyrand aloof from a
deliberation in which the knowledge of the condition of Europe
should have a decisive weight. In this must be still seen one of
those proofs, at that time less frequent each day, of the almost
impartial justice of his mind. He was sometimes heard to say:
‘It is Talleyrand alone who understands me; it is only
Talleyrand with whom I can talk.’ He consulted him, and at other
moments spoke of placing him at Vincennes. Thus he did not fail
to call him when he deliberated upon his marriage. M. de
Talleyrand strongly insisted that he should unite himself to an
Archduchess. He even thought that the Emperor had sought an
interview with him because his intervention in this matter would
contribute to decide Austria. What is certain is the fact that
he has always alluded to his conduct in this instance as one of
the guarantees he had given of his fundamental opinion in regard
to the alliances of France and the conditions of the
independence of Europe.

“It is seen how, in all these matters—the state of opinion
during the campaign of the Danube, the deliberations relative to
the divorce, those which preceded the marriage with Marie
Louise—the Memoirs of my mother would have been instructive and
interesting. It is unhappily impossible to supply this last
link. I am only able to recall that she said that the Empress
was wrong in doubting her fidelity on one occasion, probably
relative to the divorce. She has announced that this matter was
explained. I can not explain it in its place, and I have no
recollection that she ever spoke to me of it. At the moment of
the divorce her devotion was appreciated, and Queen Hortense
went so far as to consult with her in regard to it twice before
enlisting her irrevocably in favor of her mother. I have no wish
to over-estimate the value of what she did in that matter; the
most refined delicacy dictated her conduct; and, besides, with
her deplorable health, her forced inactivity, her former
relations to Josephine, and our new situation near the Emperor,
she would have had in a renovated Court, near a new Empress, a
most awkward and painful position. It may be conceived, indeed,
that nothing in all that I am going to recall restored our
credit at the Court, and my family remained there irreparably
lessened in its influence. The Emperor, however, approved of my
mother’s remaining with the Empress Josephine. He even praised
her for it; this suited her. He regarded her as a person on the
retreat, with whom he no longer needed to concern himself.
Having less to expect from him, less to demand from him, he
reproached us less in his thought for omitting to do anything on
our part to please him. He left my father in the circle of his
official duties, to which his character and a certain mingling
of discontent and fear kept him closely enough confined. It was
almost established in the mind of Napoleon that he had nothing
more to do for us, and he no longer thought of us.

“This new situation makes it evident that the Memoirs of my
mother would have lost their interest. She no longer visited the
Court, going once only to be presented to the Empress Marie
Louise; then she had later an audience of the Emperor, who wrote
to her asking it. She would, therefore, have had nothing to
relate of which she had been a witness in the imperial palace.
She was no longer placed under obligations by any relations with
the great personages of the state—at least she considered
herself relieved of them; and yielding, perhaps too readily, to
her tastes, and her sufferings, she gradually isolated herself
from everything that would remind her of the Court and of the
Government.

“However, as my father did not cease to frequent the palace to
the end, as the confidence in M. de Talleyrand seemed not to
diminish, and, finally, as the rapid and declining steps in the
affairs of the Emperor more and more affected public opinion,
and soon stirred up the restless attention of the nation, my
mother had still much with which to become acquainted, and much
to observe, and she would have been able to give to the painting
of the last five years of the Empire a positive historic value.

“Some reflections on many events of those five years will be
taken, if it is desired, as a remembrance of what I have heard,
during this same time, from the lips of my parents.

“Among the events of that year, 1809, one of the most important,
and which made the least noise, was the action of the Emperor in
regard to the Pope. The facts were not well understood when they
took place, and, it is necessary to say, that among the nation
that Louis XIII. put under the protection of the Holy Virgin no
one thought of them. The Emperor had begun by causing the Roman
States to be occupied, then went on by dismembering them, then
by demanding from the Pope that he should make war upon England,
then by driving him from the city of Rome, then by depriving him
of all temporal power, then, finally, by causing him to be
arrested and guarded as a prisoner. How strange all this,
assuredly! And yet it seemed that no government of Catholic
Europe seriously offered assistance to the common father of the
faithful. The Pope certainly, deliberating in 1804 whether he
should crown Napoleon, had not objected on the ground that it
was he who, in that year, had caused the Duc d’Enghien to be
shot. The Emperor of Austria, deliberating in 1809 whether he
should give his daughter to Napoleon, did not object on the
ground that it was he who, in that same year, had placed the
Pope in prison. It is true that at that time all the sovereigns
of Europe had, in that which relates to pontifical authority,
entirely different ideas from those ascribed to them, and from
those attributed to them to-day. The house of Austria, in
particular, had for a traditional rule that political testament
in which the Duke of Lorraine, Charles V., recommends that the
Pope should be reduced to the single domain of the court of
Rome, and makes sport ‘of the delusion of excommunications, when
the real point is that Jesus Christ never established the
temporal power of the Church, and that the latter can possess
nothing without contradicting his example and without
compromising his Gospel.’

“In a letter of my mother she advised my father, in the autumn
of 1809, not to allow ‘Athalie’ to be represented at Court, at a
moment when it might be said that there were some allusions to
papal affairs in that struggle of a queen and a priest, and in
presence of a prince so pious as the King of Saxony, who was
preparing to visit the Emperor. In this incident was the
_maximum_ of evidence of the direction of her thoughts excited
by a tyrannic act of which so much would now be heard, and in
regard to which public opinion would certainly be no more
divided. I have not heard it said that a single officer in this
immense empire would have separated himself from a government of
which the head was excommunicated, if not by name, at least
impliedly, by the bull launched against all the authors or
abettors of the attempts against pontifical authority. I can not
refrain from alluding to the Duc de Cadore. He was a man not
without intelligence nor without honesty; but, accepting as
indisputable laws the intentions of the Emperor, after having
employed his ministry in the spoliation of the Spanish dynasty,
he concurred with the same docility in that of the sovereign
Pontiff, and, himself excommunicated as a _mandatory, abettor,
and counselor_, he maintained with great composure that Napoleon
could resume that which Charlemagne had given, and that now
France was in the presence of Rome by the rights of the Gallic
Church.

“The situation of the Empire at the end of 1809 is summarized in
these words by the great historian of the Empire: ‘The Emperor
had made himself, at Vincennes, the rival of the regicides; at
Bayonne, the peer of those who would declare war on Europe to
establish a universal republic; at the Quirinal, the peer
certainly of those who had dethroned Pius VI. to create the
Roman Republic.’

“I am not one of those who assist by declamation in intensifying
the odium of these acts. I do not regard them as unheard-of
monstrosities reserved to our century; I know that history is
full of examples with which it is not difficult to compare them,
and that analogous outrages can be found in the life of
sovereigns for whom posterity has preserved some respect. It
would not be difficult to find in the history of the severities
of the reign of Louis XIV. executions which are not incomparable
with the death of the Duc d’Enghien. The affair of the Man in
the Iron Mask, especially if, as it is difficult not to believe,
this man was a brother of the King, is nothing that the murder
of Vincennes need be envious of; and power and deception are not
less worthily arrayed in the act by which Louis XIV. seized
Lorraine in 1661 than in the fraudulent dismemberment of Spain
in 1808. I see in the abduction of the Pope hardly more than its
equivalent if we revert to the middle ages. I will add that,
even after these acts, for ever to be condemned, it was still
possible, by the use of a little wisdom, to have assured the
repose, the prosperity, and the grandeur of France to the extent
that no name in history would have been more honored than that
of Napoleon. But if any one imagines that this is what he has
not done; that all the wars thereafter undertaken were no more
than the mad preparatory steps to the ruin of the country; and
that thenceforward the character of the man already loaded with
such misdeeds was afflicted with a superciliousness and a
harshness which were discouraging to his best servants, it is
essential to clearly understand that, even at Court, all those
whom the servile complaisance of false judgment had not led
astray, sadly disabused, could rightly serve without confidence,
admire without affection, fear more than hope, desire lessons of
opposition to a terrible power, in his successes to dread his
intoxication, and in his misfortunes to weep for France rather
than him.

“Such, in fact, is the spirit in which these Memoirs would have
been continued, and it will even be found that, by a kind of
retroactive effect, this spirit is shown in the recitals
anterior to 1809. At the epoch in which history was enacting,
this spirit was slow in manifesting itself, as I have now
described it. Years glided away in sadness timid and defiant,
but without hate, and each time that a happy circumstance or a
wise measure gave their light to them, the star of hope resumed
the ascendant, and one tried to believe that the progress in the
direction of evil would have an end.

“The years 1810 and 1811 are the two tranquil years of the
Empire. The marriage in the one and the birth of the King of
Rome in the other seemed pledges of peace and stability. The
hope would have been without shadows, the security entire, if
the torn veil through which the Emperor could be seen had not
revealed passions and errors, seeds always productive of
gratuitous mistakes and senseless attempts. It was seen that the
love of excess had taken possession of him, and was carrying all
before it. Besides the interminable duration of a war with
England, with no possibility of gloriously conquering her, or of
doing her any injury that was not damaging to us, and the
continuation of a struggle in Spain difficult and unfortunate,
were two trials that the pride of the Emperor could not long
endure in peace. It was necessary that he should preserve his
reputation at all cost, and that by some astounding successes he
should cause to be forgotten those obstinate checks to his
fortune. Sound judgment pointed out that the Spanish question
was the one to end, I do not say by a return to justice and by a
generous concession—the Bonapartes are not among those to whom
such measures suggest themselves—but by force. It can readily
be believed that, had the Emperor concentrated all the resources
of his genius and of his Empire upon the resistance of the
Peninsula, he would have conquered it. Unjust causes are not
always destined to fail in this world, and the Emperor ought to
have seen that, in humiliating Spain, he was preparing the
occasion, so vainly sought, for striking England, since that
nation rendered itself vulnerable by landing her armies on the
Continent. Such an occasion made it worth while that something
should be risked. Napoleon should have gone there in person, and
himself entered the lists with Arthur Wellesley. What glory, on
the other hand, and what fortune did he not reserve to himself
and to his nation, in persistently adjourning the struggle, and
in confronting them both finally on the mournful plains of
Waterloo!

“But the Emperor had no relish for the Spanish question; he was
tired of it. It had never yielded a pleasant or glorious moment.
He half understood that he had begun it unjustly and conducted
it feebly; that he had singularly misconceived its difficulty
and importance. He tried to have a contempt for it, in order not
to be humiliated by it; he neglected it, in order to avoid its
anxieties. He had a childish repugnance, if it was nothing
worse, to risking himself in a war which did not appeal to his
imagination. Shall we dare say that he was not absolutely sure
of doing the work well, and that the dangers of reverses turned
him from an enterprise which, even well carried to its
conclusions, would have gone too slowly and with too many
difficulties to have increased his grandeur? A ready
extemporizer, his plan seemed to be to allow everything to die
of old age that displeased him, and to build up his fortune and
fame in some new enterprise. These causes, joined to the logical
developments of an absurd system, and to the developments
natural to an uncontrollable temper, annulled all the guarantees
of prudence and safety that the events of the years 1810 and
1811 seemed to have given, turned him from Spain to Russia, and
brought about that campaign of 1812 which logically drew him on
to his destruction.

“Two years in which hope had the ascendency of fear, and three
years in which fear left very little place for hope—here we
have the division of the five last years of the reign of
Napoleon.

“In speaking of 1810 and 1811, my mother would have had to show
how the two events, which ought to have inspired in the Emperor
the spirit of conservation and of wisdom, his marriage and the
birth of his son, served in the sequel only to exalt his pride.
In the interval all the obstacles between him and the execution
of his will are seen to be removed. For instance, since, long
ago, he does not pardon Fouché for having a will of his own.
Fouché showed that he desired peace. A violent scene occurs to
recall that of which Talleyrand had been the object, and the Duc
de Rovigo becomes Minister of Police, a choice which beguiles,
without doubt, the hopes of the Emperor and the fears of the
public, but which seems, however, to expand still more the area
in which arbitrary power has sway. The existence of Holland and
the indocible character of its King are still an obstacle, at
least a limit. The King is compelled to abdicate, and Holland is
declared French. Rome itself becomes the capital of a
department, and the domain of St. Peter is united, as formerly
Dauphiné was, to furnish a title for the heir to the Empire. The
clerical order, driven with a high hand, is violated in its
customs and in its traditions. An appearance of a council is
attempted and broken up, and prison and exile impose silence on
the Church. A councilor, submissive but modest, executes the
wishes of his master, but does not glorify him; he lacks
enthusiasm in his servitude: Champagny is set aside for Maret
and the lion is let loose in Europe, and no voice is heard which
rouses it to madness. And as, during this time, the fortune of
the conqueror and the liberty of the people have found the one
its limit, the other its bulwark in those immortally celebrated
lines of Torres-Vedras, it becomes essential that this restless
and maddened force should dash itself in pieces upon Moscow.

“This last period, so rich for the political historian in its
terrible pictures, has but little value to the simple observer
of the interior scenes of the government. The cloud became dense
around power, and France knew as little what was done as if she
had been lost by a throw of dice. Nevertheless, there was still
the work of drawing the instructive picture of hearts and of
minds ignorant and restless, indignant and submissive,
desolated, reassured, imposed upon, unconcerned, depressed—all
that at intervals, and sometimes concentrated into an hour; for
despotism, which always feigns to be happy, ill prepares the
masses of the people for misfortune, and believes in courage
only when it has deceived it.

“It is, I think, to this description of public sentiments that
my mother would have been able to consecrate the end of her
Memoirs, for she knew something of what everybody saw. M.
Pasquier, whom she saw every day, observed, by taste as well as
by a sense of duty, the discretion prescribed to his functions.
Accustomed to conversations with the class of persons whom he
ruled without restraint, he was during a great length of time
careful to take political notes, when all the world was free to
talk politics. The Duc de Rovigo, less discreet, divulged his
opinions rather than the facts; and the conversations of M. de
Talleyrand, more frank and more confident, were hardly more than
the disclosure of his judgments and of his predictions.”

POSTSCRIPT

IN the first volume of these Memoirs I attempted to retrace the chief events of my grandmother’s life, and I also narrated the circumstances which induced her to rewrite the manuscript unhappily destroyed in 1815. I considered it necessary to a right comprehension and appreciation of her views that the reader should learn how she had been brought up, what were the position and circumstances of her parents, for what reasons she accepted a place at Bonaparte’s Court, through what phases of enthusiasm, hope, and disenchantment she passed, how by degrees liberal opinions gained a hold upon her, and what influence her son, when he began to make a figure both in society and in political life, exercised over her.

However strong may be his confidence in the success of a publication, it is the duty of an editor to avail himself of every aid, and to make sure, or nearly so, that the author shall in everything be understood. This was all the more necessary in the present instance, because the editor, brought up to entertain the same sentiments, and accustomed to hear the same opinions and the same anecdotes repeated around him, might well be afraid of deceiving himself respecting the worth or the success of these reminiscences. Relatives are seldom good judges either of the intellectual or physical attributes of their kin. Family beauties or prodigies, admired by the fireside or in select coteries, are frequently found to be insignificant personages on a larger stage, and when seen in broader daylight. I therefore thought it well to relate all that might be needed for the instruction of the reader, and, by introducing him into the private life of the author, to account for a mixture of admiration and severity in these Memoirs which sometimes appears contradictory. I should have been excused for adding my own comments upon the ability of the writer and the character of her hero; indeed, such comments would have furnished the subject of a preface, of the kind that we are told ought to precede every work of serious importance. But I carefully avoided writing any such preface, because I had one to offer which would enhance the value of the book to the public, as it enhances it to myself—a preface written by my father more than twenty years ago. I may print that preface now, for success has justified his previsions and our hopes.

When my father wrote the pages that I am about to lay before the reader, the Second Empire was still in existence, and to all appearance secure. Nothing short of a persistent trust in the undeviating principles of justice and liberty could have led any one to believe that its fall was possible or probable. Since then the fullness of time has come, and events have marched with a rapidity which could not have been foreseen. Similar errors have brought about similar reverses; the moody and wavering mind of Napoleon III. has led him to adopt the same course which ruined the brilliant and resolute genius of the great Emperor. My father for the third time beheld the foreigner in France, and vanquished France seeking in liberty a consolation for defeat. He suffered by our misfortunes, as he had suffered by them fifty years earlier, and he had the melancholy honor of repairing a portion of those misfortunes, of hastening the day of the final deliverance of our soil. He contributed to the foundation of a liberal and popular Government on a heap of ruins. The last years of the Empire, the War, the Commune, the difficult accession of the Republic through so many perils, had no power to change his convictions; and he would think to-day just what he wrote twenty-two years ago of the vices of absolute power, of the necessity for teaching nations what conquerors cost them, of the right of his mother to set down her impressions, and of the duty of his son to publish them.

PAUL DE RÉMUSAT.

II

LAFFITTE, _November, 1857_.

“I have once more taken up, after a long lapse of time, the
manuscript of these Memoirs, which my mother composed nearly
forty years ago; and, having attentively reperused it, I now
leave it to my sons and to their children, with an injunction to
publish it. I believe that it will prove a useful historical
testimony, and, combined with her correspondence, will be a most
interesting monument to the intellect and the heart of a gifted
and good woman. This work will perpetuate the memory of my
mother.

“At whatever epoch these Memoirs may appear, I foresee that they
will not find the public ready to receive them entirely without
protest, and with satisfaction complete at all points. Even
should the Imperial restoration which we now witness not be
destined to a prolonged future—should it not be, as I hope it
may not be, the final government of the France of the
Revolution—I suspect that, whether through pride, weakness, or
imagination, France, as a whole, will continue to entertain a
tolerably exalted opinion of Napoleon, which it will be
reluctant to submit to the free examination of politics and
philosophy. He was one of those great men who are placed from
the beginning in the sphere of fancy rather than in that of
reason, and in his case poetry has taken the lead of history. A
somewhat puerile sympathy, a somewhat weak generosity, has
almost always made the nation refuse to impute to Bonaparte
those awful ills which he brought down upon France. The nation
has pitied him the most for its own misfortunes, and thought of
him as the noblest victim of the calamities of which he was the
author. I know that the sentiments which have led France to make
this strange mistake are excusable and even praiseworthy; but I
also know that national vanity, the lack of seriousness of mind,
levity which takes little heed of reason and justice, are the
sources of this patriotic error. Let us lay aside the question
of principle—since the nation chooses to resolve that question
differently at different times, and glories in despising liberty
at intervals—and let us speak only the language of national
independence. How can he be in the eyes of the people the hero
of that independence who twice brought the foreign conqueror
into the capital of France, and whose government is the only one
which, for five hundred years, since the time of the mad King
Charles VI., left French territory smaller than it found it?
Even Louis XV. and Charles X. did better than that.
Nevertheless, I am convinced the multitude will abide in its
error, and _non auferetur ab ea_.

“It is, then, very unlikely that the spirit in which my mother
has written will ever be popular, or that all her readers will
be convinced. I am prepared for this, but I also think that
among thoughtful people the truth will make its way. Infatuation
will not have an endless duration, and, notwithstanding certain
obstinate prejudices, public opinion—especially if liberty be
at length restored to us and remain with us—will be
enlightened, and will never again sacrifice the rights of reason
and those of the public conscience to glory. Will my mother
appear sufficiently impartial to these more impartial judges? I
believe she will, if they take account of the time at which she
wrote, and also of the sentiments and ideas which inspired her;
and so I have no hesitation in delivering up her Memoirs to the
judgment of the world.

“‘The further I go,’ wrote my mother to me, ‘the more I am
resolved that, until my death, you shall be my only reader, and
that is enough for me.’ And again: ‘Your father says he knows no
one to whom I could show what I am writing. He says nobody
carries so far as I do “the talent of being true.” That is his
expression. Well, then, I do write for no one, but one day you
will find this among my effects, and you may do with it what you
will.’ She was not without some apprehensions. ‘There is a
thought which sometimes troubles me. I say to myself, “If one
day my son should publish all this, what will be thought of me!”
The idea that I may be supposed to be evil-minded, or, at least,
ill-natured, makes me uneasy. I exhaust myself with the effort
to find something to praise, but this man was such an
exterminator (_assommateur_) of worth, and we were brought so
low, that I grow utterly disheartened, and the cry of truth
utters itself irresistibly. I know no one but you to whom I
would intrust such confidences.’

“I hold myself formally authorized by these passages to bequeath
the work which my mother confided to me to the public. As for
the opinions which it expresses, taking them upon myself, I will
explain myself freely respecting the Emperor and the Empire, but
not from the purely political point of view. All that I might
say on the subject of despotism (which I hate) would be without
importance in this case, since the question is, What would be a
just judgment of the Emperor and the Empire formed by one who
had witnessed the 18th Brumaire, and shared the confident
readiness of the nation to divest itself of the charge of its
own destinies, by placing them in the hands of one man? I deal
with the moral, and not the political, aspect of the matter.

“Let us first consider the Emperor, and discuss him with those
only who, while finding much to admire in him, are willing to
exercise their judgment upon what they admire. It was commonly
said, under his reign, that he despised men. The motives by
which he defended his policy in his conversations were not taken
from among the noble qualities of the human heart, but from that
which he thoroughly understood, the imagination of the people.
Now, imagination is naturally captivated by grand and beautiful
things, and the imagination of the Emperor, which was vivid and
daring, was accessible to this kind of charm. His extraordinary
faculties rendered him capable of great things, and he employed
them, with others, to captivate France, the world, and
posterity. Thence came what was thoroughly admirable in his
power and his life; and, if we were to consider that only, we
could not place him too high. Nevertheless, a close observer
will discern that it was by that intelligence and imagination,
rather than the purely moral sentiments of justice and of right,
that all was done. Take, for example, religion. It was not the
truth of religion, it was its influence and its prestige, which
dictated what he did for its cause; and so with all the rest. In
his contemptuous estimate of humanity, he recognized only two
springs of action—vanity and self-interest; and to the masterly
handling of these he applied himself with remarkable ability.
While by the _éclat_ of his acts, by the glory of his arms, by a
permanent embellishment of conservative social principles, he
gave to his government what was essential to prevent self-love
from blushing at the fact of its connection with it, he
carefully manipulated, he caressed, he even exalted other
sentiments more humble, which may oftentimes be harmless, but
which are not noble and virtuous principles. Love of repose,
fear of responsibility, preoccupation with the pleasures of
private life, the desire of personal comfort, the taste of
riches, as well in the individual as in the family; finally, all
the weaknesses which usually accompany these sentiments when
they are exclusive, found in him a protector. It is from this
point of view that he was everywhere recognized as essential to
the preservation of order. But, when men are governed by the
springs I am about to call to mind, and when the governor is not
upheld or restrained by the sentiment of pure and true glory, by
the instinct of a soul naturally frank and generous, it is an
easy step to the thought that imagination, vanity, interest are
paid with counterfeit as well as good money; that abuses of
power, appearances of grandeur, success attained at all cost,
tranquillity maintained by oppression, riches distributed by
favor, prosperity realized by force or made to seem to exist by
falsehood—that, finally, all the triumphs of artifice or of
violence, all that despotism can wrest from credulity and fear,
are things which also prosper among men; and that the world is
often, without serious objection, the plaything of the strongest
and most shrewd. But nothing in the nature of the Emperor
preserved him from the temptation of employing such means for
the advancement of his power. Not satisfied with meriting power,
he consented, when he could not merit it, to take it by force or
to steal it. He made no distinction between prudence and
cunning, or between true statesmanship and Machiavellism.
Finally, policy is always in the path of deception, and Napoleon
was always a deceiver.

“It is deception which, in my judgment, most degraded the
Emperor, and, unhappily, with him his empire. For this reason,
it is to be regretted that France yielded obedience to him, that
men rendered him service, whatever glory the nation has gained,
whatever probity and whatever talent the men have shown. One can
not wholly ignore the misfortune of having been the dupe or the
accomplice, in all cases the instrument, of a system in which a
cunning deception plays as great a part as wisdom, and violence
as genius; of a system in which cunning deception and violence
must lead on to the desperate extremes of an unwise policy. To
such a policy France will not consent, and it is only in the
interest of self-love that France exalts the glory of Napoleon.

“As to his associates, they likewise ought certainly not to have
been humiliated by what they did or what they silently
sustained. They were right in not publicly denouncing what the
nation did not denounce, and in presenting services loyally
rendered, honesty, zeal, devotion, capacity, the patriotism
which they had displayed in the performance of public duties, as
an offset to the bitter denunciations of their adversaries, to
the trifling or corrupt parties, who had done less or who had
done worse. The recollections of the Convention or those of the
emigration could not be brought against them to any advantage,
and, after all, they did well not to blush at their cause. Their
justification is found in the language of Tacitus, who, even
under a despotism, thinks that praise is due a capable and
efficient officer, though he may practice what he calls
_obsequium et modestia_.

“These last words are applicable to persons of high character
who, like the members of my family, served the Emperor without
mean selfishness and without special distinction. But still,
when, under his reign itself, eyes were opened to the character
of his despotism—when the wail of the dying nation had been
heard, when later, in reflecting upon the fall of a dictatorial
power and on the succession of a constitutional power, that
policy was brought up for consideration which does not place
government and liberty in the hands of enemies, it was
impossible not to revert with some embarrassment, with some
bitterness of heart, to those days in which example, confidence,
admiration, thoughtlessness, a justifiable ambition, had united
to urge good citizens to place themselves among the supporters
of absolute power. For he who does not seek to make himself
blind, he who is ready to be honest with himself, will find it
impossible to conceal the fact that dignity of mind and
character is lost under the pressure of a despotism even
glorious and necessary, and more completely under one that is
harsh and maintained without reason. There is no cause of
self-reproach without doubt; but neither can one praise his own
acts, or be satisfied with what he has done or what he has seen;
and the more the soul is opened to the convictions of liberty,
the more one turns his eyes with grief to the days in which
liberty was shut out from it—days of voluntary servitude, as
Boëtius characterizes it.

“What it has not been either necessary or proper to say of one’s
self to his contemporaries and of the latter to themselves, it
is a duty to frankly avow when one writes for himself and for
the future. What conscience has felt and revealed, what
experience and reflection have taught, it is necessary to
delineate, or not write at all. Unbiased truth, disinterested
truth, is the controlling thought of the Memoirs. This is the
basis of those of my mother.

“She had suffered intensely during the years in which her
opinions were in opposition to her interests, and during which
the former could have triumphed over the latter only _per
abrupta_, as Tacitus says, speaking of this same thing, _sed in
nullum reipublicæ usum_. Attempts of this kind, besides, never
fall to the lot of a woman; and, in a remarkable letter that my
mother wrote to one of her friends, she said to her that women
at least had always the expedient of saying in the palace of
Cæsar:

‘Mais le cœur d’Emilie est hors de ton pouvoir.’

And she declared to her that this line had been her secret
consolation.

“Her correspondence will reveal in its lightest shades, in its
deepest recesses, the sentiments of a pure and active soul. It
will there be seen how she united a generous kindness to a
penetrating observation of all those weaknesses, of all those
unhappy circumstances of our nature, which give opportunity to
the painters of morals to display their talents. It will there
also be seen how, after having caused her much suffering,
Napoleon had kept a place in her thoughts; how this memory still
moved her; and how, when the unhappiness of his exile at St.
Helena was described, she was deeply affected. When, in the
summer of 1821, the news of the death of Napoleon was brought to
Paris, I saw her melt with tears, and she always became sad when
uttering his name. As to the men of her time, I will say only
one thing: she had learned to know them at Court. The
recollection she had preserved of it left her no pleasure. I
have somewhere seen related a little circumstance that greatly
interested those who witnessed it. It was the time when the
French imitation of Schiller’s ‘Marie Stuart’ was in fashion.
There was a scene in which Leicester repels, by pretending not
to know him, a devoted young man who, relying on his secret
thoughts, comes to him with a proposal to save the Queen of
Scotland. Talma represented admirably the haughty cowardice of
the courtier, who disavows his own affection for fear of being
compromised, and insolently repels the man who makes him afraid:
‘What do you want of me? I do not know you.’ The act terminated,
and in the box in which we were seated the entire company was
struck with this scene, and my mother in her agitation suffered
some words to escape whose import was: ‘That was it precisely! I
have seen the same thing!’ When suddenly appeared at the
entrance of the box M. de B——, to whom no special application
could assuredly have been made, but who had been chamberlain of
the Emperor, my mother could no longer restrain herself. She
said to Mme. de Catellan, ‘If you knew, madame!’ . . . and she
wept!

“It may be said that this condition of her mind has influenced
her in coloring her pictures. I do not think it so. Saint-Simon
has also painted a Court, and the despotism in it was more
becoming, more natural, and the characters, perhaps, a little
more strong in our days. What does he do, however, if not
justify, in his truthful painting, what the teachers of his time
and the moralists of all times have said of Courts in general?
The exaggeration of Saint-Simon is in the language. Of a fault
he makes a vice; of a weakness, a cowardice; of a negligence, a
treason; and of a hesitation, a crime. The expression is never
strong enough for his thought, and it is his style which is
unjust rather than his judgment.

“Let us mention a person of a less impulsive mind, more reserved
in her language, and who certainly had her reasons for seeing
with more indulgence than Saint-Simon the people over whom Louis
XIV. reigned. How did Mme. de Maintenon speak of the Court? ‘As
to your friends of the Court,’ she wrote to Mlle. de Glapion,
‘they are always with you, and, if you could see what we see,
you would find yourself seeing (at Saint-Cyr) only
irregularities, wayward conduct, want of light; while we see
murders, jealousies, hatreds, treacheries, insatiable desires,
degradations, which are covered up by the name of grandeur, of
courage, etc., for I fly into a passion in merely permitting
myself to think of them.’ The judgments of my mother are not
characterized by such vivid expressions. But, like Saint-Simon,
like Mme. de Maintenon, she had good reason to think that a
constant personality, which betrays itself by fear, jealousy,
complaisance, flattery, forgetfulness of others, contempt of
justice, and desire to injure others, reigns at the Court of
absolute kings, and that self-love and interest are the two keys
of every Court secret. My mother has said no more; and her
diction, without being cold and tame, never exaggerates the
facts with which she deals, and allows, in almost everything she
has been compelled to relate, that excuse demanded by human
weakness in its struggle with bad example, with the temptation
of fortune, and with the seductions of a power that does not
find itself compelled to respect its promises. It is not without
reason that, when we speak of the Empire, our eulogies are
almost exclusively addressed to its armies, because, at least,
in the business of war, intrepid contempt of death and of
suffering is such a triumphant victory over the selfishness of
ordinary life, that it covers up whatever this selfishness can
suggest, even to the soldiers themselves, of bitter sacrifices
to pride, to envy, to cupidity, to ambition.

“Look through the centuries in which historians and moralists
endeavor to paint in its true colors every evil that incessantly
increases within the sphere of government, especially in the
shadow, or, if Louis XIV. demands it, in _the sun_ of absolute
power. It is strange, in fact, how that which ought to bring
into play only devotion, and to place the benefit of all above
personal interest—I mean the service of the state—furnishes to
human selfishness occasions to make mistakes and means of being
satisfied by the art of concealing itself. But it is apparent
that this has not been said often enough, for I have not
discovered that the evil is soon to end, or even become less
conspicuous. Truth alone, incessantly presented to public
opinion, can arm it against falsehoods, of which party spirit
and state government raise a cloud concealing the misfortunes of
the body politic. The masses of the people can never know too
well at what price human insolence sells them the necessary
service of a government. In times of revolution especially,
misfortune sometimes renders it indulgent to the forms of
government which have fallen, and the system which triumphs
covers with a deceptive veil everything which makes its victory
odious. Truthful books must, some time or other, cause all masks
to fall, and leave to all our weaknesses the salutary fear of
being some day revealed.”

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected including Schônbrunn to Schönbrunn and cortége to cortège throughout both volumes.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.

The Table of Contents and List of Illustrations from Volume I was added to this volume.

[The end of _Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. II_, by Madame de Rémusat.]