The Emperor could not but be touched by this solicitude, for the child was Prince Louis, the nephew whom he loved above all others.
“And why do you wish me not to go?” asked the Emperor sadly. Then, passing his hand through the child’s golden curls, he said: “Mon enfant, it is not the first time that I go to the war. Why should it trouble you? Never mind; I shall soon return.”
“Oh, my dear uncle,” said the boy, again bursting into tears, “those wicked Allies want to kill you! Oh, uncle, let me go with you!”
For a time the Emperor did not speak. Taking the child on his knee, he pressed him to his heart and embraced him warmly. The Emperor was deeply moved, but presently, when he had steadied his voice, he called, “Hortense! Hortense!” And as the Queen came hurrying into the room, Napoleon said: “Here, take my nephew out and give his governess a severe scolding for thoughtlessly putting such words into his mouth and exalting his sensibility.” Then, after addressing the boy affectionately, the Emperor, turning to Marshal Soult, who was labouring under deep emotion, said vivaciously: “Embrace him—he will have a good heart and a beautiful soul. He may be the hope of my race.”
Hortense must have relished these last words. Are not great captains regarded as oracles? When, at Paris, as at St. Leu, some of the visitors discussed metaphysics, or grouped themselves around La Bédoyère, reading Racine or Shakespeare; when others posed to Garnerey for their portraits, and others played billiards, Louis Napoleon and his brother listened open-mouthed to the tales of heroism which Mlle. Cochelet was instructed to tell them. Later, in the land of exile, while the Duchesse de St. Leu and her suite played diabolo—one room serving as salon and salle à manger—and when the only book at their disposal was a volume of “Anecdotes de la Cour de Philippe-Auguste,” discovered, after a long search, by the Abbé Bernard, the ex-Queen of Holland would watch her sons playing at soldiers with the common children. And the day came when she saw Louis at the military school of Thün learning how to command, and then at Rome, at the house of his grandmother, Lætitia Bonaparte—scenes which enabled her to record the story of Prince Louis Napoleon’s youth.
The character of the Prince, according to Mlle. Cochelet, was amiable, timid, self-contained. He spoke very little, and Le Bas (his tutor) adds that he was naturally distrait and inactive. Thus he always remained. Those who most flattered Napoleon III. never concealed, in rhetorical phrases, the evident inertness of his physical nature; morally, he was a docile slave.
His look of inertness and apparent insensibility is only the mark of an ardent and powerful inner life. His eyes are dull, but they are as deep as the thought in which they are plunged, which appears now and again as the flame leaps from the hearth. His forehead is as sombre as fate, but it is large, like its conception. The lips are white, but fine, delicate, discreet, only sufficiently opened to allow of the escape of sharp and precise expressions of a reflecting and ordered will. His speech is indolent and slow, but he is sure of himself, and his apparent indifference is but the excess of his self-confidence. Audacity veiled by timidity, firmness dissimulated by mildness, inflexibility compensated for by goodness, finesse concealed by bonhomie, life under the marble, fire beneath the cinders—in a word, something of Augustus and of Titus under the look of Werther, that type of German dreaminess: such was the appearance of Louis Bonaparte.[22]
M. de La Guéronnière finds, in this portrait which he gives of the Prince, a justification for the various appreciations formulated of his mind and character. But do we not see, on the contrary, in the portrait a simple play of antitheses, a fantastic interpretation of that which appeared to be the evident reality?—which is to say that Louis Napoleon was a young man of average intelligence, without mental unbending, and characterized by an absolute lack of willpower. Like all who hesitate and dream, he finished by attaching an idea to himself and adopting it, in order not to be submerged by other ideas. Thus he deserved the title of “doux entêté” given to him by his mother. But his impassiveness, his stiffness, were only timidity, and his resolutions to act showed themselves only after delays or with sudden coups, which emphasized his weakness.
He had doubtless a certain fatalistic power of resistance, but this side of his character only showed the absence of an active mind; the enterprises of Stratford and Boulogne do not contradict this view. As to the coup d’état, one might explain it by many causes foreign to a ripe will. Besides, was not the coup d’état predicted by the “Grand Albert,” and did not that prediction give the rein to the superstitious docility of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte?[23]
However this may be, whatsoever his faults may have been, we must recognize in him who was Napoleon III. one quality: he had a heart. Even his adversaries knew this, and some of them—those who were sincere—admitted it with a good grace. The words of Georges Sand, written when the Prince was a prisoner in the fortress of Ham, would have remained true if events, stronger than his apparent energy, had not let loose against him hatreds at once tenacious and justified. “Two or three of us,” she wrote, “often talk about you, and we always say, after recognizing the dangers which would follow your accession to power of any kind, ‘He possesses the gift of making himself loved; it is impossible not to love him.’”