Perhaps—I do not assert it—secret party meetings have been, and are, held now and again at No. 241, Avenue Louise, in those beautiful salons, so rich in relics, or in the garden of the imperial residence, now more than ever an object of public curiosity, with its modest blue stone façade and its oak door with carved eagles, guarded only by those tall chestnut-trees which serve as a curtain to many a demeure bourgeoise of more ambitious aspect. The Prince’s partisans, the associates of his hopes, evidently come and go very unobtrusively, for no one at Brussels hears or sees anything of them. The Prince’s voice is raised at long intervals—whenever he thinks it desirable to formulate the Imperialist idea—in succinct and frank letters addressed, now to the Bonapartist Committees of the Seine, anon to personalities like M. Malbert. But this is done so discreetly, these letters are written in so dignified a style, without any reference to the question of personal banishment from France, that the sharpest-sighted critic is unable to trace in them the faintest infraction of the duty which an exile owes to a country which shelters him.
Prince Napoleon returns to Brussels from his rare visits to the Empress Eugénie at Farnborough Hill, and to his sister, the Duchesse d’Aoste Douairière, at Turin, without getting himself talked about; for on no account would he say or do anything which might compromise the country in which he has found an agreeable asylum for half his life. When he comes to England two lines in the “Times,” “Telegraph,” or “Post” sometimes announce the fact, either on his arrival or departure. His “movements” at the Carlton or the Savoy (the hotels of his predilection) are not watched and reported upon; the names of his visitors are not publicly, or even privately, mentioned. His friendly visit to King Manoel at Buckingham Palace in November, 1909, was recorded in the Court Circular (which scrupulously noted his rank of “Imperial” Highness) and mentioned in the “Times”—that was all. And perhaps it was enough; for the Prince it was certainly ample. Let him alone, and he is grateful.
It was amusingly said of him by a Brussels critic: “Prince Napoleon is a Pretender who seems to have no pretensions.” Probably the author of the mot was unaware of the homage which he was paying to the Prince’s correct interpretation of a rôle so difficult to sustain.
The daily life of the Prince has never ceased to be governed, in all its details, by the same prudent and admirable reserve. His existence is that of a grand seigneur, too distinguished to “make an exhibition of himself” for the entertainment of the crowd, too cultivated not to know how to vary the preoccupations of an exile by useful toil. In the morning one may often catch a flying glimpse of his tall, robust, dominating figure among the riders galloping in the beautiful Bois de la Cambre, or at the “meets” of M. Saint-Pol de Sinçay and of the Prince de Chimay. But he is seldom to be seen in the afternoon. He is then at home, studying some work on political economy or some scientific volume, or, to assist his memory concerning some historical point, turning the leaves of one or other of the 6,000 books composing his “Napoleonic” library—those 6,000 volumes of the prodigious annals of the Revolution, the Consulate, and the Empire. The Prince’s library is, of its special kind, unique. Of his collection of books and relics he has said:[182] “I live my darkest hours in the midst of souvenirs of the First Emperor. Each one of these, in recalling a period of his life, teaches me a lesson. Force has driven me from the cradle and from the tomb of the great Emperor. I take refuge in his thoughts. To him alone I go to ask for inspirations.”
If you have been granted an audience of the Prince—a favour not accorded to more than a very few of those who seek it, unless an application is well backed—you wait your turn in one of the rooms on the left of the entrance-hall, into which you have been shown by a footman in a light-coloured livery. Here you may find a few of the Prince’s friends who have come from Paris to spend the day with him, and who will leave in these rooms some “good mouthfuls” of the air of France.
When the moment arrives for your interview with the Prince, you pass through a vestibule gleaming with white marble, and your gaze falls upon a bronze statuette of Bonaparte, at the age of twelve, reading a book. You proceed through a vast corridor, paved, like the vestibule, with white marble. Before entering the cabinet in which Prince Napoleon receives his visitors, you cast an admiring coup d’œil upon a spacious landing where portraits and statues of the imperial family form an incomparable museum, seeming to mount guard on the threshold of this last representative of the Bonapartes. They are all here—the grandfathers and the grandmothers. Here Lætitia, robust and bonne, in her ample senaro of a Roman matron, regards reposefully her peaceable husband. Neither this Corsican—a humble deputy of the island, not long become French—nor this Florentine, by origin and temperament, seems to divine, around the head of the pale infant before them, the unperishable aureole that awaits him. There Bonaparte, at all the ages of his life, and at all the stages of his apotheosis, glances, with his cold eye, at the Kings his brothers and the Queens his sisters. Here is Joseph of Spain, whose handsome and open countenance is less that of a King than of a dilettante, épris of belles-lettres. Here is Louis of Holland, with the cunning eye, observing, not without melancholy, Hortense de Beauharnais, who seems to turn her head from him. Here is Jérôme of Westphalia, sanguine, ready-witted, adventurous, regretting that Napoleon had not allowed him to conquer the crown by his own daring. He avenged himself, however, many times—among others, on the day when, not yet having a hair upon his face, he bought, for 12,000 francs (£480), at the Emperor’s expense (!), at the sign of the “Singe Violet,” the famous travelling “necessary,” with its ivory-handled razors and silver-plated wash-hand basins.
Then, in this marvellous gallery, come the women. Here is Pauline Borghèse, an ideal Diane chasseresse—Canova’s. You remember this marvellous creature’s reply to someone who had reproached her for posing for this statue in her splendid nudity, “Oh, il y avait un poèle!” (But there was a fire!). You linger a moment to gaze upon Joséphine de Beauharnais, like the lava of a sleeping volcano under the calm envelope of this warm beauty of the isles of the West—this mortal who, as someone has said, “had the audacity to love a god.” And here is the Archduchesse Louise, in the midst of her parrots and her dogs, indifferent and dreamy as an Austrian woman, and also as far from Napoleon as from the Schönbrunn, which she prefers even to the Tuileries.
Napoleon III., fearing lest you should surprise him in the midst of his dreams, flies from you, his eyes almost effaced, as if lost in a mist. Here is Eugénie, reigning as much by her blonde beauty as by that imperial crown whose gold seems to be expiring in her glowing hair. Her eyes, in particular, strike you as strange—tranquil eyes, with their far-off, melancholy look; eyes like two tears; eyes which are about to weep, whose too large eyelids resemble inexhaustible wells, from which sorrow has nothing more to do but to draw the water. Last of all, there is Napoleon IV., with the eyes, the look, and all the sweet resignation of his mother: the “little Prince,” in the bearskin of the Imperial Guard; the Prince, grown taller, as the Woolwich cadet; the Prince—having attained his majority—in a British soldier’s cap, mournfully posed upon that languid head, already enveloped by the night of Death.
But you have arrived at the door of the Prince’s cabinet, an immense room; and here is the Prince himself, giving you a hearty and hospitable shake of the hand. The Prince’s broad chest, strong head, wide shoulders, and firm pressure of the hand which clasps yours indicate frankness and sympathy.
“Victor or Napoleon? Say, rather, a Savoyard!” exclaimed one of his opponents, who, however, could not more aptly have described or more pleased the Prince. Prince Victor is a Napoleon through his father, a Savoyard through his mother, whose saintly virtues do honour to the upright, proud character of her son. A little habit of the Prince amuses you: when he speaks he takes the large triple ring from the finger on his right hand and transfers it mechanically to his left hand. You note also that his deep, strong voice is well fitted to utter words of command—like that of all the Napoleons. The Republic of which he is so fond of talking is neither Liberal nor Conservative, but an “authoritative” Republic, with its hierarchical chief at its head.