task of procuring him the means of gratifying his passing fancies. On the occasion of his first entry into Poland, Murat, who had preceded him to Warsaw, was ordered to find for the Emperor, who would shortly arrive, a young and pretty mistress, and to select her from among the nobility. He acquitted himself cleverly of this commission, and induced a noble young Polish lady, who was married to an old man, to comply with the Emperor’s wishes. No one knows what means he employed, or what were his promises; but at last the lady consented to go in the evening to the castle near Warsaw, where the Emperor was lodged.
The fair one arrived rather late at her destination. She has herself narrated this adventure, and she acknowledges, what we can readily believe, that she arrived agitated and trembling.
The Emperor was in his cabinet. The lady’s arrival was announced to him; but, without disturbing himself, he ordered her to be conducted to her apartment, and offered supper and a bath, adding that afterward she might retire to rest if she chose. Then he quietly went on writing until a late hour at night.
At last, his business being finished, he proceeded to the apartment where he had been so long waited for, and presented himself with all the manner of a master who disdains useless preliminaries. Without losing a moment, he began a singular conversation on the political situation of Poland, questioning the young lady as if she had been a police agent, and demanding some very circumstantial information respecting the great Polish nobles who were then in Warsaw. He inquired particularly into their opinions and their present interests, and prolonged this extraordinary interrogatory for a long time. The astonishment of a woman twenty years of age, who was not prepared for such a cross-examination, may be imagined. She answered him as well as she could, and only when she could tell him no more did he seem to remember that Murat had promised, in his name, an interview of a more tender nature.
This extraordinary wooing did not, however, prevent the young Polish lady from becoming attached to the Emperor, for their liaison was prolonged during several campaigns. Afterward the fair Pole came to Paris, where a son was born, who became the object of the hopes of Poland, the rallying point of Polish dreams of independence.
I saw his mother when she was presented at the Imperial Court, where she at first excited the jealousy of Mme. Bonaparte; but after the divorce she became the intimate friend of the repudiated Empress at Malmaison, whither she often brought her son. It is said that she was faithful to the Emperor in his misfortunes, and that she visited him more than once at the Isle of Elba. He found her again in France when he made his last and fatal appearance there. But, after his second fall (I do not know at what time she became a widow), she married again, and she died in Paris this year (1818). I had these details from M. de Talleyrand.
I will now resume my sketch. Bonaparte carried selfishness so far that it was not easy to move him about anything that did not concern himself. He was, however, occasionally surprised, as it were, into impulses of tenderness; but they were very fugitive, and always ended in ill humor. It was not uncommon to see him moved even to the point of shedding a few tears; they seemed to arise from nervous irritation, of which they became the crisis. “I have,” he said, “very unmanageable nerves, and at these times, if my blood did not always flow slowly, I think I should be very likely to go mad.” I know, indeed, from Corvisart, that his pulse beat more slowly than is usual for a man’s. Bonaparte never felt what is commonly called giddiness, and he always said that the expression, “My head is going round,” conveyed no meaning to him. It was not only from the ease with which he yielded to all his impulses that he often used language which was painful and distressing to those whom he addressed, but also because he felt a secret pleasure in exciting fear, and in harassing the more or less trembling individuals before him. He held that uncertainty stimulates zeal, and therefore he rarely displayed satisfaction with either persons or things. Admirably served, always obeyed on the moment, he would still find fault, and keep everybody in the palace in dread of his displeasure about some small detail. If the easy flow of his conversation had established for the time a sense of ease, he would suddenly imagine that it might be abused, and by a hard and imperious word put the person whom he had welcomed and encouraged in his or her place—that is to say, in fear. He hated repose for himself and grudged it to others. When M. de Rémusat had arranged one of those magnificent fêtes where all the arts were laid under contribution for his pleasure, I was never asked whether the Emperor was pleased, but whether he had grumbled more or less. His service was the severest of toil. He has been heard to say, in one of those moments when the strength of conviction appeared to weigh upon him, “The truly happy man is he who hides from me in the country, and when I die the world will utter a great ‘Ouf!’ ”
I have said that Bonaparte was incapable of generosity; and yet his gifts were immense, and the rewards he bestowed gigantic. But, when he paid for a service, he made it plain that he expected to buy another, and a vague uneasiness as to the conditions of the bargain always remained. There was also a good deal of caprice in his gifts, so that they rarely excited gratitude. Moreover, he required that the money he distributed should all be expended, and he rather liked people to contract debts, because it kept them in a state of dependence. His wife gave him complete satisfaction in the latter particular, and he would never put her affairs in order, so that he might keep the power of making her uneasy in his hands. At one time he settled a considerable revenue on M. de Rémusat, that we might keep what is called open house, and receive a great many foreigners. We were very exact in the first expenses demanded by a great establishment. A little while after, I had the misfortune to lose my mother, and was forced to close my house. The Emperor then rescinded all his gifts, on the ground that we could not keep the engagement we had made, and he left us in what was really a position of embarrassment, caused entirely by his fugitive and burdensome gifts. I pause here. If I carry out the plan I have formed, my memory, carefully consulted, will furnish me by degrees with other anecdotes which will complete this sketch. What I have already written will suffice to convey an idea of the character of him with whom circumstances connected the best years of my life.
Bonaparte’s Mother
Mme. Bonaparte (née Ramolini) was married in 1767 to Charles Bonaparte, who belonged to one of the noble families of Corsica. It is said that there had been a liaison between her and M. de Marbeuf, governor of the island; and some went so far as to allege that Napoleon was the son of M. de Marbeuf. It is certain that he always showed kindness to the family of Marbeuf. However that may have been, the governor had Napoleon Bonaparte included among the number of noble children who were to be sent from Corsica to France, to be educated at a military school. He was placed at that of Brienne.
The English having become masters of Corsica in 1790, Mme. Bonaparte, a rich widow, retired to Marseilles with her other children. Their education had been much neglected, and, if we are to accept the recollections of the Marseillais as evidence, her daughters had not been brought up under the strict rule of a scrupulous morality. The Emperor, indeed, never pardoned the town of Marseilles for having been aware of the position his family occupied at that period, and the disparaging anecdotes of them imprudently repeated by certain Provençals seriously militated against the interests of the whole of Provence.
The widowed Mme. Bonaparte established herself at Paris on her son’s attainment of power. She lived a retired life, amassing as much money as possible; she meddled in no public matters, and neither had nor wished to have any influence. Her son overawed her, as he did all the rest of the world. She was a woman of very ordinary intelligence, who, notwithstanding the rank in which events placed her, never did anything worthy of praise. After the fall of the Empire she retired to Rome, where she lived with her brother, Cardinal Fesch. It is said that he, in the first Italian campaign, showed himself eager to profit by the opportunity of founding his fortune which then presented itself. He acquired, received, or even took, it is said, a considerable quantity of pictures, statues, and valuable articles, which have since served to decorate his various residences. When he afterward became a Cardinal and Archbishop of Lyons, he devoted himself wholly to the duties of his two great offices, and in the end he acquired a most honorable reputation among the clergy. He often opposed the Emperor while his disputes with the Pope were