The Duchess of Gordon was indefatigable in her ambition, but she could not always entangle dukes. Her second daughter, Madelina, was married first to Sir Robert Sinclair; and secondly, to Charles Fyshe Palmer, Esq., of Luckley Hall, Berkshire. Lady Madelina was not handsome, but extremely agreeable, animated, and intellectual. Among her other conquests was the famous Samuel Parr, of Hatton, who used to delight in sounding her praises, and recording her perfections with much of that eloquence which is now fast dying out of remembrance, but which was a thing à part in that celebrated Grecian. Susan, the third daughter of the duke and duchess, married William, Duke of Manchester, thus becoming connected with a descendant of John, Duke of Marlborough.
Louisa, the fourth daughter, married Charles, second Marquis Cornwallis, and son of the justly celebrated Governor of India; and Georgiana, the fifth and youngest, became the wife of John, the late Duke of Bedford.
Such alliances might have satisfied the ambition of most mothers; but for her youngest and most beautiful daughter, the Duchess of Bedford, the Duchess of Cordon had even entertained what she thought higher views. In 1802, whilst Buonaparte was first consul, and anticipating an imperial crown, the Duchess of Gordon visited Paris, and received there such distinctions from Napoleon Bonaparte, then first consul, as excited hopes in her mind of an alliance with that man whom, but a few years previously, she would probably have termed an adventurer!
Paris was then, during the short peace, engrossed with fêtes, reviews, and dramatic amusements, the account of which makes one almost fancy oneself in the year 1852, that of the coup d'état, instead of the period of 1802. The whirlwinds of revolution seemed then, as now, to have left all unchanged; the character of the people, who were still devoted to pleasure, and sanguine, was, on the surface, gay and buoyant as ever. Buonaparte holding his levées at the Tuileries, with all the splendour of majesty, reminds one of his nephew performing similar ceremonies at the Élysée, previously to his assuming the purple. All republican simplicity was abandoned, and the richest taste displayed on public occasions in both eras.
Let us picture to ourselves the old, quaint palace of the Tuileries on a reception day then; and the impression made on the senses will serve for the modern drama; be it comedy, or be it tragedy, which is to be played out in those stately rooms wherein so many actors have passed and repassed to their doom.
It is noon, and the first consul is receiving a host of ambassadors within the consular apartment, answering probably to the "Salle des Maréchaux" of Napoleon III. Therein the envoys from every European state are attempting to comprehend, what none could ever fathom, the consul's mind. Let us not intermeddle with their conference, but look around us, and view the gallery in which we are waiting until he, who was yesterday so small, and who is to-day so great, should come forth amongst us.
How gorgeous is the old gallery, with its many windows, its rich roof, and gilded panels! The footmen of the first consul, in splendid liveries, are bringing chairs for the ladies who are awaiting the approach of that schoolmaster's son; they are waiting until the weighty conference within is terminated. Peace-officers, superbly bedizened, are walking up and down to keep ladies to their seats and gentlemen to the ranks, so as to form a passage for the first consul to pass down. Pages of the back stairs, dressed in black, and with gold chains hanging around their necks, are standing by the door to guard it, or to open it when he on whom all thoughts are fixed should come forth.
But what is beyond everything striking is the array of Buonaparte's aids-de-camp,—fine fellows, war-worn,—men such as he, and he alone, would choose; and so gorgeous, so radiant are their uniforms, that all else seem as if in shadow in comparison.
The gardens of the Tuileries meantime are filling with troops whom the first consul is going to review. There are now Zouaves there; but these are men whom the suns of the tropics hate embrowned; little fellows, many of them, of all heights, such as we might make drummers of in our stalwart ranks; but see how muscular, active, full of fire they are; fierce as hawks, relentless as tigers. See the horse-soldiers on their scraggy steeds; watch their evolutions, and you will own, with a young guardsman who stood gazing, fifty years afterward, on the troops which followed Napoleon III into Paris, that "they are worth looking at."
The long hour is past; the pages in black are evidently on the watch; the double door which leads into the Salle des Maréchaux is opened from within; a stricter line is instantly kept by the officers in the gallery. Fair faces, many an English one among them, are flushed. Anon he appears, whilst an officer at the door, with one hand raised above his head and the other extended, exclaims, "Le Premier Consul."