Le Bas, who knew the Prince better than anyone else, speaks of his excellent heart, and quotes examples of the sensitiveness and the generous instincts of him whom his mother and the Abbé Bertrand long called “notre petit oui-oui.”
The character of the child reflects, in an exaggerated form, the qualities and the defects of those by whom he was surrounded. It is sufficient to peruse the letters of the Abbé Bertrand to understand the lightness and the inconsistency which vitiated the education of the future Emperor Napoleon III. The Republican Le Bas, on the contrary, enunciated more severe, and at the same time more generous, ideas, which his pupil transmitted into Utopian reveries. Later, the Prince’s initiation into military studies gave him a taste for the profession of arms, and inspired him with the secret hope of continuing, by modifying and even socializing it, the work of Napoleon I.
The docility of the child bent under the influence of his preceptors, as it had previously given way under that of his mother and the intimates of the household. But, besides this, the fashionable life, the soirées, the concerts, the drawing-room theatricals, and the organization of lotteries, as well as the excessive walks and drives, disarranged the carefully-elaborated programmes of education, so that the personality of Prince Louis could not prevail against the numerous changes of scene, to say nothing of the drawbacks to study caused by the life in exile and the uncertainty of what might happen at any moment.
It would be a curious study to examine the writings of Napoleon III., and to ascertain who amongst those by whom he was surrounded in his youth inspired him with the thoughts which he has put into his book, “Idées Napoléoniennes.” That work, his essays on military subjects, and his “Extinction de Paupérisme,” all reveal the accurate memory of the former pupil of the camp of Thün, and show how well he recollected the lessons of Le Bas and the advice of the ambitious Hortense, while they also give evidences of that futility for which the Abbé Bertrand was to some extent responsible.
“Slave of the souvenirs of his childhood,” wrote the Emperor, “the man obeys all his life, without doubting them, the impressions which he received when he was young, and the experiences and influences of which he has been the object.”[24]
If (concludes M. Stéfane-Pol) circumstances had not been stronger than the free-will of Napoleon III., those impressions, experiences, and influences, many and various as they were, would never have brought about the unheard-of metamorphosis of a man of heart and delicacy, if not of reason, until popular sentiment, refusing to analyze him in order to arrive at a result, finished by execrating him.
CHAPTER III
FROM LONDON TO HAM VIÂ BOULOGNE
Between 1839 and 1848 Prince Louis Napoleon (allowing for the six years which he spent at Ham) resided mostly, if not entirely, in London. In the first part of those years—on his arrival here from Switzerland, which he had left under pressure of Louis Philippe’s Government—he lodged at Fenton’s Hotel, St. James’s Street,[25] soon removing to Carlton Terrace, Pall Mall. In 1846, upon his escape from Ham and his return to London (May 27), he stayed for a while at the Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn Street; then changed his quarters to King Street, St. James’s, where he was living when he acted as a special constable during the Chartist riots.[26] From King Street he wrote (February 15, 1847) to a friend, M. Vieillard:
For the last fortnight I have been installed in a new house, and for the first time in seven years I enjoy the pleasure of being at home. I have assembled here all my books, my albums, and family portraits—in a word, all the precious objects which have escaped shipwreck. The portrait of the Emperor, by Paul Delaroche, is very fine. This generous present has given me great pleasure, and forms the most beautiful ornament of my salon.
An intimate friend of the Prince (the pseudonymous “Baron d’Ambès”) asserts that Louis Napoleon “left Lord Cardigan’s house to occupy Lord Ripon’s, Carlton Gardens. He did not lose by the change.”[27] His drawing-rooms were “full of glorious souvenirs and sacred relics. There were portraits of the Emperor, the Empress, and Queen Hortense; the ring of the ‘crowning’; the ring worn by Napoleon I. at his marriage with Joséphine; the tricolour cashmere scarf which he wore at the Battle of the Pyramids; the portraits of all the members of the imperial family; the famous talisman of Charlemagne, found in his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle, and sent to Napoleon by the cathedral clergy in 1804; a medallion with two portraits, painted by Isabey; and other marvels, doubly dear to him who religiously preserves them.”