Stephanie Beauharnais.
It will be remembered that Hortense had a cousin, Stephanie, the daughter of her father's elder brother, Marquis de Beauharnais. Though Viscount de Beauharnais had espoused the popular cause in the desperate struggle of the French Revolution, the marquis was an undisguised "aristocrat." Allying himself with the king and the court, he had fled from France with the emigrant nobles. He had joined the allied army as it was marching upon his native land in the endeavor to crush out popular liberty and to reinstate the Bourbons on their throne of despotism. For this crime he was by the laws of France a traitor, doomed to the scaffold should he be captured.
The marquis, in his flight from France, had left Stephanie with her aunt Josephine. She had sent her to the school of Madame Campan in company with Hortense and Caroline Bonaparte. Louis Bonaparte was consequently often in the company of Stephanie, and fell desperately in love with her. The reader will recollect the letter which Josephine wrote to Madame Campan relative to Stephanie, which indicated that she had some serious defects of character. Still she was a brilliant girl, with great powers of pleasing when she condescended to use those powers.
Love of Louis Bonaparte for Stephanie.
Louis Bonaparte was a very pensive, meditative young man, of poetic temperament, and of unsullied purity of character. With such persons love ever becomes an all-absorbing passion. It has been well said that love is represented as a little Cupid shooting tiny arrows, whereas it should be presented as a giant shaking the world. The secrets of the heart are seldom revealed to others. Neither Napoleon nor Josephine were probably at all aware how intense and engrossing was the affection of Louis for Stephanie.
Objections to the marriage.
Regenerated France was then struggling, with all its concentrated energies, against the combined aristocracies of Europe. Napoleon was the leader of the popular party. The father of Stephanie was in the counsels and the army of the Allies. Already advances had been made to Napoleon, and immense bribes offered to induce him, in treachery to the people, to restore to the exiled Bourbons the sceptre which the confiding people had placed in his hands. Napoleon, like all men in power, had bitter enemies, who were ever watching for an opportunity to assail him. Should his brother Louis marry a daughter of one of the old nobility, an avowed aristocrat, an emigrant, a pronounced "traitor," doomed to death, should he be captured, for waging war against his native land, it would expose Napoleon to suspicion. His enemies would have new vantage-ground from which to attack him, and in the most tender point.
Under these circumstances Napoleon contemplated with well-founded anxiety the idea of his brother's union with Stephanie. He was therefore the more ready to listen to Josephine's suggestion of the marriage of Louis and Hortense. This union in every respect seemed exceedingly desirable. Napoleon could gratify their highest ambition in assigning to them posts of opulence and honor. They could also be of great service to Napoleon in his majestic plan of redeeming all Europe from the yoke of the old feudal despotisms, and in conferring upon the peoples the new political gospel of equal rights for all men.
Napoleon had perceived this growing attachment just before he set out on the expedition to Egypt. To check it, if possible, he sent Louis on a very important mission to Toulon, where he kept him intensely occupied until he was summoned to embark for Egypt. But such love as animated the heart of Louis is deepened, not diminished, by absence. A naval officer, who was a friend of Louis, and who was aware of his attachment for Stephanie, remonstrated with him against a connection so injudicious.
Unavailing remonstrances.