by whom she was surrounded, and was still more surprised when she found that these faults were not always the result of love. Her marriage cast her on the mercy of the most tyrannical of husbands; she became the resigned and dejected victim of ceaseless and unremitting persecution, and sank under the weight of her sorrow. She yielded to it without daring to complain, and it was not until she was on the point of death that the truth became known. I knew Mme. Louis Bonaparte very intimately, and was acquainted with all the secrets of her domestic life. I have always believed her to be the purest, as she was the most unfortunate, of women.
Her only consolation was in her tender love for her brother; she rejoiced in his happiness, his success, his amiable temper. How many times have I heard her say, “I only live in Eugène’s life!”
She declined to marry Rewbell’s son, and this reasonable refusal was the result of one of the errors of her imagination. From her earliest youth she had persuaded herself that a woman, if she would be virtuous and happy, should marry no man unless she loved him passionately. Afterward, when her mother wished her to marry the Comte de Mun, now a peer of France, she again refused to obey her.
M. de Mun had emigrated; Mme. Bonaparte obtained permission for his return. He came back to a considerable fortune, and asked for the hand of Mlle. de Beauharnais in marriage. Bonaparte, then First Consul, had little liking for this union. Mme. Bonaparte would, however, have had her own way about it, only for the obstinate resistance of her daughter. Some one said before her that M. de Mun had been, while in Germany, in love with Mme. de Staël. That celebrated woman was in the imagination of the young girl a sort of monster, whom it was impossible to know without scandal and without taint. M. de Mun became odious to her, and thus he missed a great match and the terrible downfall that was to ensue. It was a strange accident of destiny, thus to have missed being a prince, perhaps a king, and then dethroned.
A little while after, Duroc, then one of the Consul’s aides-de-camp, and in high favor with him, fell in love with Hortense. She was not insensible to his passion, and thought she had at length found that other half of her being which she sought for. Bonaparte was in favor of the marriage; but this time Mme. Bonaparte was inflexible. “My daughter,” she said, “must marry a gentleman or a Bonaparte.” Then Louis was proposed. He had no liking for Hortense, he detested the Beauharnais family, and despised his sister-in-law: but, as he was taciturn, he was supposed to be amiable; as he was severe in his judgments, he was supposed to be a good man. Mme. Louis has since told me that when she first heard of this arrangement she suffered terribly. Not only was she forbidden to think of the man she loved, but she was also to be given to another, whom she instinctively distrusted. However, as this marriage was in accordance with her mother’s wishes, as it would cement the family ties, and might advance her brother’s interests, she yielded herself a submissive victim; nay, she did even more. Her imagination was full of the duties imposed on her; she determined to make every sort of sacrifice to the wishes of a husband whom she had the misfortune not to love. Too sincere and too reserved to feign sentiments she did not feel, she was gentle, submissive, full of deference, and more anxious perhaps to please him than if she had loved him. The false and suspicious disposition of Louis Bonaparte led him to regard the gentle deference of his wife as affectation and coquetry. “She practices on me,” he said, “to deceive me.” He believed that her conduct was dictated by the counsels of her experienced mother; he repelled the efforts she made to please him, and treated her with rude contempt. Nor was this all. He actually divulged to Mme. Louis all the accusations which had been brought against her mother, and, after having gone as far in that direction as he could go, he signified his pleasure that confidential relations between his wife and her mother should cease. He added, “You are now a Bonaparte. Our interests should be yours; those of your own family no longer concern you.” He accompanied this cruel notification with insulting threats, and a coarse expression of his disdainful opinion of women; he enumerated the precautions he meant to take in order, as he said, to escape the common fate of all husbands, and declared that he would not be the dupe either of her attempts to escape his vigilance or of the tricks of pretended docility by which she might hope to win him over.
The effect of such a declaration upon a young woman full of fancies may easily be conceived. She conducted herself, however, as an obedient wife, and for many years only her sadness and her failing health betrayed her sufferings. Her husband, who was hard and capricious, and, like all the Bonapartes, selfish—worn and embittered besides by a painful disease which he had contracted during the Egyptian campaign—set no limit to his exactions. As he was afraid of his brother, while at the same time he wanted to keep his wife away from Saint Cloud, he ordered her to say it was by her own wish that she seldom went thither, and forbade her to remain there a single night, no matter how much her mother might press her to do so. Mme. Louis became pregnant very soon after her marriage. The Bonapartes and Mme. Murat, who were displeased at this marriage, because, as Joseph’s children were girls, they foresaw that a son of Louis, who would also be a grandson of Mme. Bonaparte, would be the object of natural interest, spread the outrageous report that this pregnancy was the result of an intimacy between the First Consul and his step-daughter, with the connivance of Josephine herself. The public was quite ready to believe this scandalous falsehood, and Mme. Murat repeated it to Louis, who, whether he believed it or not, made it a pretext for every kind of conjugal tyranny. The narrative of his cruelty to his wife would lead me too far at present; I shall return to the subject hereafter. Her servants were employed as spies upon her; the most trifling notes addressed to or written by her were opened; every friendship was prohibited; Louis was jealous even of Eugène. Scenes of violence were frequent; nothing was spared her. Bonaparte was not slow to perceive this state of affairs, but he was grateful to Mme. Louis for her silence, which put him at his ease, and exempted him from the necessity of interference. He, who never esteemed women, always professed positive veneration for Hortense, and the manner in which he spoke of and acted toward her is a formal contradiction of the accusations which were brought against her. In her presence his language was always careful and decent. He often appealed to her to arbitrate between his wife and himself, and he took rebukes from her that he would not have listened to patiently from any one else. “Hortense,” he said more than once, “forces me to believe in virtue.”
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
(1802–1803.)
Not the least evil of troubled times is that bitter spirit of criticism which produces mistrust,