When we come to see who these queens were, we shall appreciate the peculiar irony of the situation. First, there was the Queen of Spain, Joseph’s wife, who was still angry about Napoleon’s jilting of her sister Désirée, and who furthermore saw as a consequence of this marriage the probability of the arrival of a direct heir and the extinction of her husband’s chances of the succession. Secondly came Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, Napoleon’s sister, violently jealous of Napoleon, of Marie Louise, and of everyone else. Third came the wife of Jerome Bonaparte, Catherine, Queen of Westphalia, whom Napoleon had torn from the arms of her betrothed to give to his loose-living young brother. The fourth was Hortense, Queen of Holland, whose mother Napoleon had just divorced in order to marry the woman whose train Hortense was carrying. Had Marie Louise been capable of any unusual thought whatever, she must have felt that she would be safer entering a powder magazine than going up the aisle of Nôtre Dame with those four viragoes at her heels.
MARIE LOUISE
EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH
CHAPTER VII
SOME COURT DETAILS
ONCE bitten, twice shy. Napoleon had had one wife of whom doubtful stories had circulated. He would run no risk with the new one. Marie Louise had been strictly guarded all her life. Napoleon determined that in that respect he would substitute scorpions for her father’s whips. No man was ever to be presented to his wife without his consent; under no circumstances whatever was she to be alone with a man at any time.
To achieve his object he revived all the court ceremony of the Soleil Monarque; he added a few oriental improvements of his own, and to see that his orders were carried out he surrounded Marie Louise with women who were the wives and sisters of his own generals, absolutely dependent on him and accustomed to military procedure.
The Austrian ladies who had attended on Marie Louise before her marriage were sent home, every single one of them, as soon as she crossed the frontier. Marie Louise bade good-bye there to the friends of a lifetime—Napoleon was risking nothing. As Dame d’Honneur and consequently first lady-in-waiting, Napoleon appointed the Duchess of Montebello, widow of the unfortunate Lannes, who had died fighting at Aspern against Marie Louise’s father and an army commanded by Marie Louise’s uncle. The other important positions were filled in similar fashion. Four “red women” were appointed, whose duty was to be by the Empress’s side night and day, two on duty and two within call. Had enough eunuchs been available, Napoleon would probably have employed them. A seraglio would have been quite in agreement with his estimation of woman’s constancy.
Considering that his court etiquette had to recover from the citizen phase of the Revolution and from the solemn, military stiffness of the Consulate, Napoleon certainly succeeded remarkably well. Where aides-de-camp sufficed in 1802, equerries were necessary from 1804 onwards; the maîtres d’hotel had to be replaced by chamberlains; the Empress’s friends had to be appointed ladies-in-waiting. Like all reactions, this one went too far. The gaiety of the Bourbon court was extinguished, and the devil-may-care trifling of the Directory salons perished equally miserably.
Napoleon himself was mainly responsible for this. He was never good company in any sense of the word. He had a remarkable gift for saying unpleasant things in an unpleasant manner, and in his presence the whole company was on tenterhooks, wondering what was going to happen next. If a lady had a snub nose, he said so; if a gentleman’s coat was shabby, he said so with fury, because it was his pride to be the only shabby person present. If rumours hinting at a lady’s fall from virtue were in circulation, he told her so at the top of his voice, and demanded an explanation. When Napoleon quitted his court he invariably left half the women in tears and half the men in a rage. Then Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento and Grand Chamberlain, would go limping round from group to group, saying with his twisted smile, “The Emperor commands you to be amused.”
While Josephine was Empress, this state of affairs was not so noticeable, for her dexterous tact soothed the smart caused by Napoleon’s brusqueness, but under Marie Louise unbearable situations occurred again and again.