Mme. Louis Bonaparte remained at Malmaison for a fortnight in profound retirement and deep dejection. Toward the end of May she left for Cauterets. She was indifferent to all things, tearless, sleepless, speechless. She would press the hand of any one who spoke to her, and every day, at the hour of her son’s death, she had a violent hysterical attack. I never beheld grief so painful to witness. She was pale, motionless, her eyes rigidly fixed—one could not but weep on approaching her; then she would utter these few words: “Why do you weep? He is dead—I know it well; but I do not suffer. I assure you I feel nothing.”
During her journey to the south, a tremendous storm roused her from this state of lethargy. There had been a storm on the day that her son died. When the thunder roared this time, she listened to it attentively; as it increased in violence, she was seized with a terrible nervous attack, followed by a flood of tears; and from that instant she regained the power of feeling and of suffering, and gave herself up to a profound grief which never completely subsided. Although I can not continue her history without anticipating dates, I will nevertheless conclude this episode in her life at once. She took up her abode among the mountains with a small suite, and tried to escape from herself by continually walking, so as to exhaust her strength. In a state of constant painful excitement, she wandered through the valleys of the Pyrenees, or climbed the rocks, attempting the most difficult ascents, and seemed, I have been told by others, as if only bent on wearing herself out.
At Cauterets she met by chance with M. Decazes, who was then young, unknown to fame, and, like the Queen, in deep grief. He had lost his young wife, and was in bad health. These two met and understood each other’s grief. It is extremely probable that Mme. Louis, who was too unhappy to restrict herself to the conventionalities of her rank, and refused to receive unsympathetic persons, was more accessible to a man suffering from a sorrow like her own. M. Decazes was young and handsome; the idle sojourners at a watering-place and the inconsiderate tongue of scandal pretended there was something more than friendship in this. The Queen was too much absorbed in her sorrow to take notice of anything that was going on around her. Her only companions were young friends devoted to her, anxious about her health, and eager to procure her the least alleviation. Meanwhile letters were written to Paris full of gossip about the Queen and M. Decazes.
At the end of the summer King Louis rejoined his wife in the south of France. It would seem that the sight of the sorrowing mother and of his only surviving son softened his heart. The interview was affectionate on both sides, and the married pair, who for long had lived in estrangement, were once more reconciled. Had Louis returned immediately to the Hague, it is probable that the reconciliation would have been lasting; but he accompanied his wife to Paris, and their domestic union displeased Mme. Murat. I was told by the Empress that at first, on their return to Paris, her daughter was deeply touched by the grief of her husband, and said that, through suffering, a new bond had been formed between them, and that she felt she could forgive the past. But Mme. Murat—or so the Empress believed on what appeared to be good grounds—began once more to disturb her brother’s mind. She related to him, without appearing to believe them herself, the stories told of the Queen’s meetings with M. Decazes. Less than this would have sufficed to rekindle Louis’s jealousy and suspicion. I can not now remember whether he had himself met M. Decazes in the Pyrenees, or whether he had merely heard him spoken of by his wife; for, as she attached not the least importance to her acquaintance with him, she often said, before other persons, how much she had been touched by the similarity of their sorrows, and how deeply she felt, in her own grief, for the desolation of the bereaved husband.
The Empress, who was alarmed at the emaciated condition of her daughter, and who feared for her the fatigue of another journey, as well as the climate of Holland, entreated the Emperor, who had then returned to Paris, to persuade Louis to allow his wife to remain in Paris for her confinement. The Emperor obtained permission for her by commanding Louis to grant it. The latter, who was angry, embittered, and no doubt ill pleased at being forced to return alone to the gloomy mists of his kingdom, and who was beset by his own bad temper, resumed his suspicions and his ill humor, and once more vented both on his wife. At first she could hardly believe him to be in earnest; but, when she found herself again being insulted, when she began to understand that even in her sorrow she was not respected, and that she had been thought capable of an intrigue at a time when she had been only longing for death, she fell into a state of utter dejection. Indifferent to the present, to the future, to every tie she felt contempt for her husband, which perhaps she allowed to be too plainly perceptible, and she thought only of how she might contrive to live apart from him. All this took place in the autumn of 1807. When I shall have reached that date, I may have more to say about this unhappy woman.
The Empress shed many tears over the death of her grandson. Besides the ardent affection she had cherished for this child, who was of a lovable disposition, her own position was, she felt, endangered by his death. She had hoped that Louis’s children would make up to the Emperor for her lack of offspring, and the terrible divorce, which cost her so often such agonizing dread, seemed after this sad loss once more to threaten her. She spoke to me at the time of her secret fears, and I had much difficulty in soothing her.
Even at the present day the impression produced by M. de Fontanes’ fine speech on this misfortune, into which he contrived to introduce a remarkable description of Bonaparte’s prosperity, is not yet forgotten. The Emperor had ordered that the colors taken from the enemy in this last campaign and the sword of Frederick the Great should be borne in state to the Invalides. A Te Deum was to be sung, and an oration delivered in the presence of the great dignitaries, the Ministers, the Senate, and the pensioners themselves. The ceremony, which took place on the 17th of May, 1807, was very imposing, and the speech of M. de Fontanes will perpetuate for us the remembrance of those sacred spoils, which have since been restored to their former owners. The orator was admired for aggrandizing his hero, and yet for refraining from insult to the vanquished, and for reserving his praise for what was really heroic. It was added that, strictly speaking, his praise might be taken for advice; and such was the state of submission and fear in those days that M. de Fontanes was held to have displayed remarkable courage.
In his peroration he described his hero surrounded with the pomp of victory, but turning from it to weep over a child. But the hero did not weep. He was at first painfully affected by the boy’s death, then shook off the feeling as soon as possible. M. de Talleyrand told me afterward that the very next day after hearing the news the Emperor was conversing freely and just as usual with those around him, and that when he was about to grant an audience to some of the great nobles from the Court of Warsaw, who came to offer their condolence, he (M. de Talleyrand) thought himself obliged to remind him to assume a serious expression, and ventured to offer a remark on his apparent indifference, to which the Emperor replied that “he had no time to amuse himself with feelings and regrets like other men.”