His words, energetically hammered out, resound through the large salon, full of cases containing the spolia opima of nearly a century of imperial grandeurs. Here are sabres, there swords; elsewhere crosses and medals; hats, browned by powder; redingotes, no longer grey, but faded, colourless. Ah! that Napoleon—what rays of light he leaves behind him in his hats, his greatcoats, and his swords, the latter still gleaming, and all forming a noble cradle for the heir, born to preserve the immortal memory of the great Emperor! These bullets, mortars, swords, guns, banners, hats, greatcoats, spurs—all the conqueror’s battle paraphernalia, sorted and classified—must perturb the mind of even the most stoical and unsympathetic; and the chances are that you will leave No. 241 without having studied the Napoleon of to-day as calmly and as thoroughly as you had intended to. In that dominating head there is a mixture of the Carignan Savoyards and the Napoleon Bonapartes. The convex forehead, arched, low, stubborn, is that of Clotilde, his mother. The moustache, long and sèche, is that of King Humbert, his uncle; but it is in the chin, prominent and handsome as that in a Greek statue; it is in the black eyes, sphinx-like in their penetration, and as steel-bright as an eagle’s (as is said of the Bonapartes), that Prince Napoleon so strongly resembles his father, as that father resembled Napoleon I. Summing up, you feel that you have seen a Prince robust alike in body and mind—mens sana in corpore sano. France, without distinction of party, may be proud of this scion of a glorious race. And who knows if the Republic is not damaged by depriving itself of the services of this citizen?
Some of the privileged few who are received by this descendant of Napoleon I., in the midst of those rare prints which faithfully reproduce the episodes of that dazzling career, have dined or supped off the selfsame campaign plate on which were served the hasty repasts of the conqueror of Austerlitz or of Jena before or after the victory. “The privileged ones of whom I speak,” says the most amiable and gifted of confrères, M. Gérard Harry, “are numerically few, mais de choix. By his admirable fulfilment of the rôle of a silent and studious exile, by the charm of his conversation—the talk of an érudit and an artist—and by his sportsmanlike qualities, Prince Napoleon has made, in the royal family and in the ‘high society’ of Belgium, friends whose circle he has restricted only from a sentiment of proud reserve, and the better to preserve himself from the bothers inseparable from ‘fashionable’ existence. One seldom sees him at the theatre, concealed in the semi-obscurity of a box, except when some chef-d’œuvre of French dramatic art is produced; or at the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire; or at ‘Wauxhall,’ when the attraction is some literary piece brought from his natal land. On such occasions he is accompanied only by one or other of the Bonapartist notabilities who come in turn from Paris, like the ‘relief’ of a guard of honour.”
I recall an audience granted by the Prince to the “Figaro” in 1910, at which the heir of the Napoleons expressed his initiation in the art of aviation, and his pride that Frenchmen of to-day—Frenchmen of the Republic—have been the heroes and the conquerors of so many aerial contests.
That so many merits should have attracted Princesse Clémentine is not more surprising than the attachment of the Prince to a King’s daughter so morally royal. This youngest of the daughters of Leopold II. has the same tastes as her consort—a heart as French as his own. It was her affection for France which led her for so many years to make one of the Mediterranean plages—St. Raphael—her winter home. She is the only one of the daughters of King
The Empress. Comte Primoli. M. Pietri.
H.I.M. THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE IN THE EMPRESS JOSÉPHINE’S BEDROOM AT LA MALMAISON, 1910.
The Empress Joséphine died in this room on June 1, 1814.
Courteously lent by the Proprietors of the illustrated Paris journal, “Femina.”
The Photograph by “Central-Photo,” Paris.