As she sailed into the salon in all her Queen of Sheba splendour, it was to be greeted by her sister-in-law in a modest dress of muslin, without a solitary gem to relieve its simplicity; and—horror!—to find that the room had been re-decorated in blue by the artful Josephine—a colour absolutely fatal to her green magnificence! It was thus a very disgusted Princess who made her early exit from the palace between a double line of bowing flunkeys, masking her anger behind an affectation of ultra-Royal dignity.
Still, Pauline was now a grande dame indeed, who could really afford to patronise even Napoleon's wife. Her Court was more splendid than that of Josephine. She had lovers by the score—from Blanguini, who composed his most exquisite songs to sing for her ears alone, to Forbin, her artist Chamberlain, whose brushes she inspired in a hundred paintings of her lovely self in as many unconventional guises. Her caskets of jewels were matched by the most wonderful collection of dresses in France, the richest and daintiest confections, from pearl embroidered ball-gowns which cost twenty thousand francs to the mauve and silver in which she went a-hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau. At Petit Trianon and in the Faubourg St Honoré, she had palaces that were dreams of beauty and luxury. The only thorn in her bed of roses was, in fact, her husband, the Prince, the very sight of whom was sufficient to spoil a day for her.
When, at Napoleon's bidding, she accompanied Borghese to his Governorship beyond the Alps, she took in her train seven wagon-loads of finery. At Turin she held the Court of a Queen, to which the Prince was only admitted on sufferance. Royal visits, dinners, dances, receptions followed one another in dazzling succession; behind her chair, at dinner or reception, always stood two gigantic negroes, crowned with ostrich plumes. She was now "sister of the Emperor," and all the world should know it!
If only she could escape from her detested husband she would be the happiest woman on earth. But Napoleon on this point was adamant. In her rage and rebellion she tore her hair, rolled on the floor, took drugs to make her ill; and at last so succeeded in alarming her Imperial brother that he summoned her back to France, where her army of lovers gave her a warm welcome, and where she could indulge in any vanity and folly unchecked.
Matters were now hastening to a tragic climax for Napoleon and the family he had raised from slumdom in Marseilles to crowns and coronets. Josephine had been divorced, to Pauline's undisguised joy; and her place had been taken by Marie Louise, the proud Austrian, whom she liked at least as little. When Napoleon fell from his throne, she alone of all his sisters helped to cheer his exile in Elba; for the brother she loved and feared was the only man to whom Pauline's fickle heart was ever true. She even stripped herself of all her jewels to make the way smooth back to his crown. And when at last news came to her at Rome of his death at St Helena it was she who shed the bitterest tears and refused to be comforted. That an empire was lost, was nothing compared with the loss of the brother who had always been so lenient to her failings, so responsive to her love.
Two years later her own end came at Florence. When she felt the cold hand of death on her, she called feebly for a mirror, that she might look for the last time on her beauty. "Thank God," she whispered, as she gazed, "I am still lovely! I am ready to die." A few moments later, with the mirror still clutched in her hand, and her eyes still feasting on the charms which time and death itself were powerless to dim, died Pauline Bonaparte, sister of an Emperor and herself an Empress by the right of her incomparable beauty.