CHAPTER XIX
EFORE resuming the succession of events, I have a strong desire to dwell a little on the names of those persons who at this time composed the Court, and who occupied a distinguished position in the Government. I shall not be able, however, to draw a series of portraits which can vary enough, one from the other, to be piquant. We know very well that despotism is the greatest of levelers. It regulates the thoughts, it determines both actions and words; and the regulations to which all submit are often so strictly observed that the exteriors are assimilated, and perhaps even some of the impressions received.
I remember that during the winter of 1814 the Empress Maria Louisa received a large number of persons every evening. They came to obtain news of the army, in whose movements and plans every one was deeply interested. At the moment when the Emperor, in his pursuit of the Prussian General Blücher, left to the Austrian army leisure to advance as far as Fontainebleau, Paris believed itself about to fall into the power of strangers. Many persons met in the saloons of the Empress and questioned each other with great anxiety. Toward the end of this evening M. de Talleyrand came to call on me after leaving the Tuileries. He told me of the anxiety which he had witnessed, and then said: “What a man, madame, this must be, who can cause the Comte de Montesquiou and the Councilor of State Boulay (de la Meurthe) to experience the same anxiety, and to evince it in the same words!” He had found these two persons with the Empress. They had both struck him by their pallor, and both expressed their dread of the events which they began to foresee in the future.
With few exceptions—either because chance did not gather round the Emperor persons of any marked individuality, or because of the uniformity of conduct of which I have just spoken—I can not recall many purely personal peculiarities which deserve to be commemorated. Setting the principal figures aside, as well as the events which I propose to relate, I have but the names of the others to recount, the costumes which they wore, and the duties with which they were intrusted. It is a hard thing for men to feel that the sovereign to whom they are attached has a thorough and universal contempt for human nature. Such a consciousness saddens the spirits, discourages the soul, and compels each man to confine himself to the purely material duties of his position, which he ends by regarding as mere business. Each one of these men who composed the Court and the Government of the Emperor had undoubtedly a mind of his own, and especial feelings and opinions. Some among them silently practiced certain virtues, others concealed their faults and even their vices. But both appeared on the surface only at the word of command, and, unfortunately for the men of that time, Bonaparte believed that more was to be made out of the bad side of human nature than from the good, and therefore looked for vices rather than for virtues. He liked to discover weaknesses, and profited by them; and, where there were no vices, he encouraged these weaknesses, or, if he could do no better, he worked on their fears—anything to prove himself always and constantly the strongest. Thus he was by no means ill pleased that Cambacérès, though possessing estimable and distinguished qualities, allowed his foolish pride to be seen, and gave himself the reputation of a certain license of morals and habits which counterbalanced the just admiration rendered to his cultivation and to his natural probity. Nor did the Emperor ever deplore the indolent immorality of M. de Talleyrand, his careless indifference, nor the small value he placed on the esteem of the public. He was infinitely amused by what he saw fit to call the silliness of the Prince de Neuchâtel, and the servile flattery of M. Maret.
He took advantage of the avarice which he himself had developed in Savary, and of the callousness of Duroc’s disposition. He never shrank from the remembrance that Fouché had once been a Jacobin; indeed, he said with a smile: “The only difference is that he is now a rich Jacobin; but that’s all I want.”
His Ministers he regarded and treated as more or less efficient clerks, and he used to say, “I should not know what to do with them if they were not men of mere ordinary abilities and character.”
If any one had been conscious of real superiority of any kind, he must needs have endeavored to hide it; and it is probable that, warned by an instinctive sense of danger, everybody affected dullness or vacuity when those qualities were not real.
Memoirs of this period will suffer from this remarkable feature of it, which will give rise to a plausible, though unmerited, accusation against the writers of being malevolent in their views, partial toward themselves, and extremely severe toward others. Each writer will in reality be able to tell his own secret only, but will have been unable to penetrate that of his neighbor.