But Stéphanie always believed that Kaspar was her son, and she passed the last thirty years of her life in mourning a murdered husband, a murdered son, a lost throne, and the utter ruin of her whole life.
This is only one more example of the blight which Napoleon left upon the lives of nearly everyone with whom he came into close contact. All the people who were indebted to him for their entire personal advancement lived to see the day when they paid for a few golden hours with the most utter regret and bitterness. The only ones who “lived happily ever after” were those who had always regarded him with suspicion, like Macdonald, or those of inferior mental calibre, like Marie Louise, whom a strange Providence seemed to take under its own special care.
So much for Napoleon’s relations with women. Nowhere can one find the least trace of romance or self-sacrifice on his part, and it can safely be said that no woman ever loved him devotedly. Never could Napoleon have said of any woman’s beauty, as Richard III. said,
“Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.”
In men he could inspire the utmost self-devotion; it seems hateful to think first of the Cuirassiers, a living torrent of steel, pouring cheering to their deaths at Wagram at his command, and then of his vulgar deceit of Walewska and his petty, mercenary intrigues with other women. It leaves a foul blot on the splendour which surrounds him.
“Methought I saw a slug crawl slavering
Over the delicate petals of a flower.”
