The Emperor appointed the Duchess de Montebello to be lady of honour to Maria-Louisa; the Count de Beauharnais to be her gentleman of honour, and the Prince Aldobrandini to be her equerry. In the misfortunes of 1814, these individuals, said the Emperor, did not evince the devotedness which the Empress was entitled to expect from them. Her equerry deserted her without taking his leave; her gentleman of honour refused to follow her; and her lady of honour, notwithstanding the attachment which the Empress entertained for her, thought she had completely fulfilled her duty in attending her mistress as far as Vienna.
The appointment of the Duchess de Montebello to the post of lady of honour was one of those happy selections which, at the time it was made, excited universal approbation. The Duchess was a young and beautiful woman, of irreproachable character, and the widow of a marshal, called the Orlando of the army, who had recently fallen on the field of battle. This choice was very agreeable to the army, and encouraged the national party, who were alarmed at the marriage and the number and rank of the chamberlains who were appointed. This retinue was, by many, looked upon as a step towards the counter-revolution; and endeavours were made to represent it as such. As for the Emperor, he had acted in ignorance of the character of Maria-Louisa[Maria-Louisa], and had been principally influenced by the fear that she would be filled with prejudices respecting birth, that might be offensive at the Court. When he came to know her better, and found that she was wholly imbued with the prevailing notions of the day, he regretted not having made another choice. He conceived that he should have done better to select the Countess de Beauveau, a woman of amiable, mild, and inoffensive manners, who would have been influenced only by the family advice of her numerous relatives, and who might thus have introduced a kind of useful custom, and have occasioned the appointment of well-recommended inferiors. She might also have rallied about the Court many persons who were at a distance; and that without any inconvenience, because these arrangements could only have been brought about by the sanction of the Emperor, who was not the sort of man to allow himself to be abused.
The Empress conceived the tenderest affection for the Duchess de Montebello. This lady had at one time a chance of being Queen of Spain. Ferdinand VII. when at Valency, requested the Emperor’s permission to marry Mademoiselle de Tascher, cousin-german of Josephine, and bearing the same name, after the example of the Prince of Baden, who married Mademoiselle de Beauharnais. The Emperor, who already contemplated a separation from Josephine, refused his consent to the match, not wishing by this connexion to add to the difficulties that already stood in the way of his divorce. Ferdinand then solicited the hand of the Duchess de Montebello, or of any other French lady whom the Emperor might think proper to adopt. The Emperor subsequently gave Mademoiselle de Tascher in marriage to the Duke d’Aremberg, whom he intended to create Governor of the Netherlands; with the view of ultimately compensating Brussels for the loss of the old Court. The Emperor moreover wished to appoint the Count de Narbonne, who had taken part in the Empress’s marriage, Gentleman of honour, in room of the Count de Beauharnais; but the extreme aversion which Maria-Louisa evinced for this change deterred the Emperor from carrying it into effect. The Empress’s dislike to the Count de Narbonne was, however, only occasioned by the intrigues of the individuals composing her household, who had nothing to fear from M. de Beauharnais, but who very much dreaded the influence and talent of M. de Narbonne.
The Emperor informed us that, when he had to make appointments to difficult posts, he usually asked the persons about him to furnish him with a list of candidates; and from these lists, and the information he obtained, he privately deliberated on his choice. He mentioned several individuals who were proposed as lady of honour to the Empress: they were the Princess de Vaudemont, Madame de Rochefoucalt, afterwards Madame de Castellanes, and some others. He then asked us to tell him whom we should have proposed; which occasioned us to take a review of a good part of the Court. One of us mentioned Madame de Montesquiou; upon which the Emperor replied, “She would have done well, but she had a post which suited her still better. She was a woman of singular merit; her piety was sincere, and her principles excellent; she had the highest claims on my esteem and regard. I wanted half a dozen like her; I would have given them all appointments equal to their deserts, and wished for more. She discharged her duties admirably when with my son at Vienna.”
The following anecdote will afford a correct idea of the manner in which Madame de Montesquiou managed the King of Rome. The apartments of the young Prince were on the ground floor, and looked out on the court, of the Tuileries. At almost every hour in the day, numbers of people were looking in at the window, in the hope of seeing him. One day when he was in a violent fit of passion, and rebelling furiously against the authority of Madame de Montesquiou, she immediately ordered all the shutters to be closed. The child, surprised at the sudden darkness, asked Maman Quiou, as he used to call her, what it all meant. “I love you too well,” she replied, “not to hide your anger from the crowd in the court-yard. You, perhaps, will one day be called to govern all those people, and what would they say if they saw you in such a fit of rage? Do you think they would ever obey you, if they knew you to be so naughty?” Upon which, the child begged her pardon, and promised never again to give way to such fits of anger.
“This,” observed the Emperor, “was language very different from that addressed by M. de Villeroi to Louis XV. ‘Behold all those people, my Prince,’ said he, ‘they belong to you; all the men you see yonder are yours.’”
Madame de Montesquiou was adored by the young King of Rome. At the time of her removal from Vienna it was found necessary to employ stratagems to deceive the child: it was even feared that his health would suffer from the separation.
The Emperor had conceived many novel ideas relative to the education of the King of Rome. For this important object he decided on the Institut de Meudon, of which he had already laid down the principle, with the view of farther developing it at his leisure. There he proposed to assemble the Princes of the Imperial house, particularly the sons of those branches of the family who had been raised to foreign thrones. This plan, he contended, would have combined the attentions of private tuition with the advantages of public education. “These children,” said the Emperor, “who were destined to occupy different thrones, and to govern different nations, would thus have acquired conformity of principles, manners, and ideas. The better to facilitate the amalgamation and uniformity of the federative parts of the Empire, each Prince was to bring with him from his own country ten or twelve youths of about his own age, the sons of the first families in the state. What an influence would they not have exercised on their return home! I doubted not,” continued the Emperor, “but that Princes of other dynasties, unconnected with my family, would soon have solicited, as a great favour, permission to place their sons in the Institute of Meudon. What advantages would thence have arisen to the nations composing the European association! All these young Princes,” said he, “would have been brought together early enough to be united in the tender and powerful bonds of youthful friendship: and they would, at the same time, have been separated early enough to obviate the fatal effects of rising passions—the ardour of partiality—the ambition of success—the jealousy of love.”
The Emperor wished that the education of the Princes should be founded on general information, extended views, summaries, and results. He wished them to possess knowledge rather than learning, judgment rather than attainments; he preferred the application of details to the study of theories. Above all, he objected to the pursuing of any particular study too deeply, for he regarded perfection, or too great success in certain things, whether in the arts or sciences, as a disadvantage to a prince. A nation, he said, will never gain much by being governed by a poet, a virtuoso, a naturalist, a chymist, a turner, a locksmith, &c. &c.
Maria-Louisa confessed to the Emperor that, when her marriage with him was first proposed, she could not help feeling a kind of terror, owing to the accounts she had heard of Napoleon from the individuals of her family. When she mentioned these reports to her uncles, the Archdukes, who were very urgent for the marriage, they replied,—“That was all very true, while he was our enemy: but the case is altered now.“