So the Vanguard sailed from Naples, and Nelson felt the world cold and inhospitable without her sweet flatteries and clinging yet inspiring adoration. He wrote more and more briefly to Fanny. The wound on his head, the pressure of business, were natural excuses. He felt himself in a maze of thoughts and feelings she could never understand. Poor Fanny!
But he wrote incessantly to Emma after leaving, letters which contained a meaning between the lines which only she could read; the stain of kisses the sweeter because secret. No violent scandal had as yet arisen, for half the Fleet was in love with her courage, gaiety, and the gallant spirit enshrined in the fairest face that ever dazzled a sailor’s eyes. She was the comrade of all; at their beck for any service she could render; and from Lord St. Vincent down to the midshipmen, they swore by her. It was still easy for men to believe that Nelson thought as they did and no more.
But Emma knew better. She who, in Greville’s words, had always needed a master and must have the bit in her charming mouth and the bridle and whip to direct her, had now found a slave, and a slave who had conquered the coming master of Europe. She knew it as every woman knows her power, and her head swam with the knowledge. Good God! what should she do with him? The wrong thing—inevitably the wrong thing.
Nelson’s judgment in naval matters was infallible, but set him on shore and he was a man like another; and the more fallible because his prejudices were so strong and the self-esteem the world and Emma combined to flatter was stronger daily. How could he ever think himself in the wrong? He and Emma knew the inmost facts of the situation. Who should contradict them? They went their own way.
They flung the Two Sicilies into helpless war with France in the Roman territory, and when the Army and the miserable King fled routed, there was nothing for it but a flight for the Royal Family to Palermo.
She lived a romance in those days and throve exceedingly on the sparkle and bubble of it. One may see her at the Royal Palace, daily with the Queen, exhorting, almost commanding. Nelson had advised her of Buonaparte’s design on the Two Sicilies. In Austria was no help; no, not even though Marie Caroline’s daughter was Empress-Consort in Vienna. Palermo, Palermo and patience, had become the only hope for Neapolitan Royalty in these hard times.
“But I cannot, I cannot!” the pale Queen protested. “My dear friend, you may see for yourself that a King who flees is lost. Never again shall we regain our throne and Buonaparte has already a creature of his own to occupy it. I will die here. I will face my sister’s fate from the Jacobins.”
“If you die at your post, madam, I will remain and die with you,” cried the impassioned Emma. “But Nelson advises flight, and did you ever know the saviour of Europe wrong?”
“But how, how can it be done if I assent—which I will not do unless compelled? You know, my beloved, my only friend, that we are watched night and day. We cannot fly without our jewels, treasures, necessaries. It cannot be done.”
Emma, who knew from the Queen’s lips all the particulars of the flight of the unhappy King and Queen of France to Varennes and its miserable failure, recalled here how all was near lost by Marie Antoinette’s insistence that Royalty could not flee without little queenly furnitures which attracted suspicion. But she was not there to arrange it! That and all else if one were Emma. Her magnificent self-confidence carried her forward.