Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era

by L. Mühlbach

For this reason Hortense hesitated at first to comply, but Bonaparte grew only the more pressing and vehement in his request.

"You know how I like to see you dance, Hortense," he said, with his irresistible smile; "so do this much for me, even if you take the floor only once, and that for but a single contredance."

And Hortense, although most reluctant, although blushing with shame at the idea of exposing herself in such unseemly shape to the gaze of all, obeyed and joined the dances.

This took place in the evening--how greatly surprised, then, was Hortense when next morning she found, in the paper that she usually read, a poem, extolling her performance in words of ravishing flattery, and referring to the fact that, notwithstanding her advanced state of pregnancy, she had consented to tread a measure in the contredance, as a peculiar trait of amiability!

Hortense, however, far from feeling flattered by this very emphatic piece of verse, took it as an affront, and hastened at once to the Tuileries, to complain to her mother, and to ask her how it was possible that, so early as the very next morning, there could be verses published in the newspapers concerning what had taken place at the ball on the preceding evening.

Bonaparte, who happened to be with Josephine when Hortense came in, and was the first to be questioned by her, gave her only an evasive and jocose reply, and withdrew. Hortense then turned to her mother, who was leaning over on the divan, her eyes reddened with weeping and her heart oppressed with grief. To her, Bonaparte had given no evasive answer, but had told the whole truth, and Josephine's heart was at that moment too full of wretchedness, too overladen with this fresh and bitter trouble, for her possibly to retain it within her own breast.

Hortense insisted upon an explanation, and her mother gave it. She told her that Bonaparte had got the poet Esmenard to write the verses beforehand, and that it was for this reason that he had urged her to dance; that he had ordered the ball for no other purpose than to have her dance, and have the poem that complimented her and referred to her pregnancy published in the next day's paper.

Then, when Hortense, in terror, begged to be informed of the ground for all these proceedings, Josephine had the cruel courage to tell her of the slanders that had been circulated in reference to herself and Bonaparte, and to say that he had arranged the poem, the ball, and her participation in the dance, because, on the preceding day, he had read in an English journal the calumnious statement that Madame Louis Bonaparte had safely given birth to a vigorous and healthy child some weeks previously, and he wished in this manner to refute the malicious statement.

Hortense received this fresh wound with a cold smile of scorn. She had not a word of anger or indignation for this unheard-of injury, this shameless slander; she neither wept nor complained, but, as she rose to take leave of her mother, she swooned away, and it required hours of exertion to restore her to consciousness.

A few weeks later, Hortense was delivered of a dead male infant, and so passed away her last dream of happiness; for thus was destroyed the hope of a better understanding between her and her husband.