JEROME BONAPARTE. 1808.
“Engraved by I. G. Müller, knight, and Frederich Müller, son, engravers to his majesty the King of Würtemberg. After a design made at Cassel by Madame Kinson.”
Jerome yielded later to his brother’s wishes, and in 1807 was rewarded with the new kingdom of Westphalia. Napoleon kept close watch of him, however, and his letters are full of admirable counsels. The following is particularly valuable, showing, as it does, that Napoleon believed a government would be popular and enduring only in proportion to the liberty and prosperity it gave the citizens.
“What the German peoples desire with impatience [he told Jerome], is that persons who are not of noble birth, and who have talents, shall have an equal right to your consideration and to public employment (with those who are of noble birth); that every sort of servitude and of intermediate obligations between the sovereign and the lowest class of the people should be entirely abolished. The benefits of the Code Napoleon, the publicity of legal procedure, the establishment of the jury system, will be the distinctive characteristics of your monarchy.... I count more on the effect of these benefits for the extension and strengthening of your kingdom, than upon the result of the greatest victories. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being, unknown to the German peoples.... What people would wish to return to the arbitrary government of Prussia, when it has tasted the benefits of a wise and liberal administration? The peoples of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, desire equality, and demand that liberal ideas should prevail.... Be a constitutional king.”
Louis in Holland was never a king to Napoleon’s mind. He especially disliked his quarrels with his wife. In 1807 Napoleon wrote Louis, apropos of his domestic relations, a letter which is a good example of scores of others he sent to one and another of his kings and princes about their private affairs.
MARIE PAULINE BONAPARTE, PRINCESS BORGHESE.
This graceful portrait of the most beautiful of Napoleon’s sisters, is from the brush of Madame Benoit, and belongs to the Versailles collection.
“You govern that country too much like a Capuchin. The goodness of a king should be full of majesty.... A king orders, and asks nothing from any one.... When people say of a king that he is good, his reign is a failure.... Your quarrels with the queen are known to the public. You should exhibit at home that paternal and effeminate character you show in your manner of governing.... You treat a young wife as you would command a regiment. Distrust the people by whom you are surrounded; they are nobles.... You have the best and most virtuous of wives and you render her miserable. Allow her to dance as much as she likes; it is in keeping with her age. I have a wife who is forty years of age; from the field of battle I write to her to go to balls, and you wish a young woman of twenty to live in a cloister, or, like a nurse, to be always washing her children.... Render the mother of your children happy. You have only one way of doing so, by showing her esteem and confidence. Unfortunately you have a wife who is too virtuous: if you had a coquette, she would lead you by the nose. But you have a proud wife, who is offended and grieved at the mere idea that you can have a bad opinion of her. You should have had a wife like some of those whom I know in Paris. She would have played you false, and you would have been at her feet....