Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

The first inkling that Murat received of the turn that affairs had taken was a request, couched in the terms of a command, from Francis, that he would restore the Marches to the Pope. Now the Marches in question had been promised to Murat by Francis himself, not twelve months before, and Murat in answer proceeded to increase his garrison and commenced to strengthen the fortifications of Ancona. He, besides, started a quarrel with the Pope, and despatched a minister of his called Magella into the Marches to assist the Carbonari in their plots against the dominion of the Holy Father.

It was about this time that he began to receive overtures, couched in the most affectionate and brotherly language, from Napoleon at Elba. A succession of disguised conspirators from Paris and other places passed in and out of the Palace, in Naples, generally under cover of the spring night, while the city disported itself along the waterfront, and gay ladies and gay men sat over their cards in the great, cool rooms or wandered about in the sleeping gardens.

For Naples was gay in those days. People saw light ahead after the years of gloom. Hunger had vanished; real hunger, at any rate. The King’s public works gave employment. Uniforms glittered everywhere. To their minds, Naples was a Paris in miniature, so the lights shone and the world danced and played on, music lay over the place in a rainbow web of sound, and the blue sea smiled at the stars.

But up in the Palace, behind closed doors, Murat sat with his chin in his hand, and his eyes wandering out to the sea from time to time, as though he expected to see something there—something whose name was never mentioned except between him and his wife, and then only in whispers.

By ones and twos the mysterious figures arrived, coming in through side doors, and staying a while, talking with their hands to their mouths, some volubly and eagerly, some gently and hesitatingly, but one thing could be observed of all of them, and that was that, somewhere on their persons, casually as a trifle but plain enough to eyes that looked for it, was either a small bunch of violets or a strip of violet coloured ribbon or a bit of violet coloured silk.

“Are you fond of the violet?” they would ask when they met. “It will return in the spring,” was the answer—and it was spring already down there. Spring breaks in February in Naples. The King was, outwardly, as gay as any, and only Caroline and a very few devoted friends saw the other side of him. The ambassadors of the Allies were watching him, as he knew, and, as was bound to happen, word came to them that strange visitors were being entertained at the Palace, among them Princess Pauline, Napoleon’s sister, who shortly afterwards returned to Elba.

Ferdinand, free of his rather dreadful Austrian consort, proceeded to espouse a certain Lucia Migliano, a lady, it is said, of noble birth but of a vulgar and immoral character—which is probably true, for how could any clean and self-respecting woman have ever been induced to marry Ferdinand?

That monarch now swore to the constitution of 1812. He opened, dissolved, and reopened a Parliament, and generally walked in the popular path. Those happenings, naturally, reacted upon the Neapolitans and helped to undermine Joachim’s position badly. The Carbonari broke out again, soon afterwards, and Joachim began to be afraid lest these popular spasms should come to the ears of the Congress and affect his interests; so he attempted to arrange matters with the Carbonari, which only went to their heads and made them more offensive than ever.

Things could not remain so for long, and there is no saying what might have happened had not Napoleon discovered that the allied Powers had not the slightest idea of living up to their word with him, that the promised annuity—promised on the basis of the huge private fortune which they had looted from him—was never going to be paid, and that some one whom he had small difficulty in connecting with the Bourbon Government in Paris was attempting to poison him.

On the evening of the 4th of March, 1815, Murat, with some of his family, was amusing himself as best he could, attempting to divert his mind from the problems and questions which had harassed him all day, in his wife’s apartments, when there appeared in the doorway a bowing attendant, begging the King and Queen Caroline to give an audience to a messenger who was awaiting their pleasure in the next room. Murat assented carelessly and told the attendant to bring him in, but the former replied that the newcomer had particularly asked that the King and Queen would give themselves the trouble to hear what he had to say, alone.