The Emperor became annoyed at last by his sisters’ behavior, and he aggravated their ill humor by indirect taunts, which wounded them very deeply. All that I witnessed during that eventful day gave me new notions of the effect which ambition produces on minds of a certain order; it was a spectacle of which I could have formed no previous conception.
On the following day, after a family dinner, a violent scene took place, at which I was not present; but we could hear something of it through the wall which divided the Empress’s boudoir from our salon. Mme. Murat burst into complaints, tears, and reproaches; she asked why she and her sisters were to be condemned to obscurity and contempt, while strangers were to be loaded with honors and dignity? Bonaparte answered her angrily, asserting several times that he was master, and would distribute honors as he pleased. It was on this occasion that he uttered the memorable remark, “Really, mesdames, to hear your pretension, one would think we hold the crown from our father, the late King.”
The Empress afterward retailed to me the whole of this angry dispute. With all her kindheartedness, she could not help enjoying the wrath of a person who so thoroughly disliked her. The discussion ended by Mme. Murat’s falling on the floor in a dead faint, overcome by her excessive anger and by the acrimony of her brother’s reproaches. At this, Bonaparte’s anger vanished, and when his sister recovered consciousness he gave her some little encouragement. A few days later, after a consultation with M. de Talleyrand, Cambacérès, and others, it was arranged that titles of courtesy should be given to the sisters of the Emperor, and we learned from the “Moniteur” that they were to be addressed as “Imperial Highness.”
Another vexation was, however, in store for Mme. Murat and her husband. The private regulations of the palace of Saint Cloud divided the Imperial apartment into several reception-rooms, which could only be entered according to the newly acquired rank of each person. The room nearest the Emperor’s cabinet became the throne-room, or Princes’ room, and Marshal Murat, although the husband of a princess, was excluded from it. M. de Rémusat had the unpleasant task of refusing him admittance when he was about to pass in. Although my husband was not responsible for the orders he had received, and executed them with scrupulous politeness, Murat was deeply offended by this public affront; and he and his wife, already prejudiced against us on account of our attachment to the Empress, henceforth honored us both, if I may use the word, with a secret enmity, of which we have more than once experienced the effects. Mme. Murat, however, who had discovered her influence over her brother, was far from considering the case hopeless on this occasion; and, in fact, she eventually succeeded in raising her husband to the position she so eagerly desired for him.
The new code of precedence caused some disturbance in a Court which had hitherto been tolerably quiet. The struggle of contending vanity that convulsed the Imperial family was parodied in Mme. Bonaparte’s circle.
In addition to her four ladies-in-waiting, Mme. Bonaparte was in the habit of receiving the wives of the various officers attached to the service of the First Consul. Besides these, Mme. Murat was frequently invited—she lived permanently at Saint Cloud on account of her husband’s position there; also Mme. de la Valette, the Marquis de Beauharnais’s daughter, whose misfortunes and conjugal tenderness afterward made her famous at the time of the sentence passed on her husband and his escape, in 1815. He was of very humble origin, but clever, and of amiable disposition. After having served some time in the army, he had abandoned a mode of life unsuited to his tastes. The First Consul had employed him on some diplomatic missions, and had just appointed him Counsellor of State. He evinced extreme devotion to all the Beauharnais, whose kinsman he had become. His wife was amiable and unpretending by nature, but it seemed as though vanity were to become the ruling passion in every one belonging to the Court, of both sexes and all ages.
An order from the Emperor which gave the ladies-in-waiting precedence over others became a signal for an outburst of feminine jealousy. Mme. Maret, a cold, proud personage, was annoyed that we should take precedence of her, and made common cause with Mme. Murat, who fully shared her feelings. Besides this, M. de Talleyrand, who was no friend to Maret, and mercilessly ridiculed his absurdities, and was also on bad terms with Murat, had become an object of dislike to both, and, consequently, a bond of union between the two. The Empress did not like anybody who was a friend of Mme. Murat, and treated Mme. Maret with some coldness; and, although I never shared any of these feelings, and, for my own part, disliked nobody, I was included in the animadversions of that party upon the Beauharnais.
On Sunday morning the new Empress received commands to appear at mass, attended only by her four ladies-in-waiting. Mme. de la Valette, who had hitherto accompanied her aunt on all occasions, finding herself suddenly deprived of this privilege, burst into tears, and so we had to set about consoling this ambitious young lady. I observed these things with much amusement, preserving my serenity in these somewhat absurd dissensions, which were, nevertheless, natural enough. So much was it a matter of course for the inmates of the palace to live in a state of excitement, and to be either joyous or depressed according as their new-born projects of ambition were accomplished or disappointed, that one day, when I was in great spirits and laughing heartily at some jest or other, one of Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp came up to me and asked me in a low voice whether I had been promised some new dignity. I could not help asking him in return whether he fancied that at Saint Cloud one must always be in tears unless one was a princess.
Yet I had my own little ambition too, but it was moderate and easy to satisfy. The Emperor had made known to me through the Empress, and M. de Caulaincourt had repeated it to my husband, that, on the consolidation of his own fortunes, he would not forget those who had from the first devoted themselves to his service. Relying on this assurance, we felt easy with regard to our future, and took no steps to render it secure. We were wrong, for every one else was actively at work. M. de Rémusat had always kept aloof from any kind of scheming, a defect in a man who lived at a Court. Certain good qualities are absolutely a bar to advancement in the favor of sovereigns. They do not like to find generous feelings and philosophical opinions which are a mark of independence of mind in their surroundings; and they think it still less pardonable that those who serve them should have any means of escaping from their power. Bonaparte, who was exacting in the kind of service he required, quickly perceived that M. de Rémusat would serve him faithfully, and yet would not bend to all his caprices. This discovery, together with some additional circumstances which I shall relate in their proper places, induced him to discard his obligations to him. He retained my husband near him; he made use of him to suit his own convenience; but he did not confer the same honors upon him which he bestowed on many others, because he knew that no favors would procure the compliance of a man who was incapable of sacrificing self-respect to ambition. The arts of a courtier were, besides, incompatible with M. de Rémusat’s tastes. He liked solitude, serious occupations, family life; every feeling of his heart was tender and pure; the use, or rather the waste of his time, which was exclusively occupied in a continual and minute attention to the details of Court etiquette, was a source of constant regret to him. The Revolution, which removed him from the ranks of the magistracy, having deprived him of his chosen calling, he thought it his duty to his children to accept the position which had offered itself; but the constant attention to important trifles to which he was condemned was wearisome, and he was only punctual when he ought to have been assiduous. Afterward, when the veil fell from his eyes, and he saw Bonaparte as he really was, his generous spirit was roused to indignation, and close personal attendance on him became very painful to my husband. Nothing is so fatal to the promotion of a courtier as his being actuated by conscientious scruples which he does not conceal. But, at the period of which I am speaking, these feelings of ours were still only vague, and I must repeat what I have already said—that we believed that the Emperor was in some measure indebted to us, and we relied on him.
The time soon came, however, when we lost some of our importance. People of rank equal to our own, and soon afterward those who were our superiors both in rank and fortune, begged to be allowed to form part of the Imperial Court; and thenceforth the services of those who were the first to show the way thither decreased in value. Bonaparte was highly delighted at his gradual conquest of the French nobility, and even Mme. Bonaparte, who was more susceptible of affection than he, had her head turned for a time by finding real grandes dames among her ladies-in-waiting. Wiser and more far-sighted persons than ourselves would have been more than ever attentive and assiduous in order to keep their footing, which was disputed in every direction by a crowd full of their own importance; but, far from acting thus, we gave way to them. We saw in all this an opportunity of partially regaining our freedom, and imprudently availed ourselves of it; and when, from any cause whatever, one loses ground at Court, it is rarely to be recovered.