TO
JOSEPHINE,
BY
EUGENE AND HORTENSE.
It was a bright and beautiful morning when I took a carriage, with a friend, and set out from Paris to visit Malmaison. We had been informed that the property had passed into the hands of Christina, the Queen-Mother of Spain, and that she had given strict injunctions that no visitors should be admitted to the grounds. My great desire, however, to visit Malmaison induced me to make special efforts to accomplish the object. A recent rain had laid the dust, the trees were in full leaf, the grass was green and rich, the grain was waving in the wind, and the highly cultivated landscape surrounding Paris presented an aspect of extraordinary beauty. We rode quietly along, enjoying the luxury of the emotions which the scene inspired, till we came to the village of Ruel. A French village has no aspect of beauty. It is merely the narrow street of a city set down by itself in the country. The street is paved, the cheerless, tasteless houses are huddled as closely as possible together. There is no yard for shrubbery and flowers, apparently no garden, no barn-yards with lowing herds. The flowers of the empire have been garnered in the palaces of the kings. The taste of the empire has been concentrated upon the Tuileries, Versailles, St. Cloud, Fontainebleau, and none has been left to embellish the home of the peasant. The man who tills the field must toil day and night, with his wife, his daughter, and his donkey, to obtain food and clothing for his family, as animals. This centralization of taste and opulence in particular localities, is one of the greatest of national mistakes and wrongs. America has no Versailles. May God grant that she never may have. But thousands of American farmers have homes where poets would love to dwell. Their daughters trim the shrubbery in the yard, and cultivate the rose, and partake themselves of the purity and the refinement of the rural scenes in the midst of which they are reared. In the village of Ruel, so unattractive to one accustomed to the rich beauty of New England towns, we found the church, an old, cracked, mouldering and crumbling stone edifice, built five hundred years ago. It was picturesque in its aspect, venerable from its historical associations, and as poorly adapted as can well be imagined for any purposes to which we in America appropriate our churches. The floor was of crumbling stone, worn by the footfalls of five centuries. There were enormous pillars supporting the roof, alcoves running in here and there, a pulpit stuck like the mud nest of a swallow upon a rock. The village priest was there catechising the children. A large number of straight-backed, rush-bottomed chairs were scattered about in confusion, instead of pews. These old Gothic churches, built in a semi-barbarian age, and adapted to a style of worship in which the pomp of paganism and a corrupted Christianity were blended, are to my mind gloomy memorials of days of darkness. Visions of hooded monks, of deluded penitents, of ignorant, joyless generations toiling painfully through them to the grave, impress and oppress the spirit. In one corner of the church, occupying a space some twenty feet square, we saw the beautiful monument reared by Eugene and Hortense to their mother. It was indeed a privilege to stand by the grave of Josephine; there to meditate upon life's vicissitudes, there to breathe the prayer for preparation for that world of spirits to which Josephine has gone. How faithful her earthly love; how affecting her dying prayer! clasping the miniature of the Emperor fervently to her bosom, she exclaimed, "O God! watch over Napoleon while he remains in the desert of this world. Alas! though he hath committed great faults, hath he not expiated them by great sufferings? Just God, thou hast looked into his heart, and hast seen by how ardent a desire for useful and durable improvements he was animated! Deign to approve my last petition. And may this image of my husband bear me witness that my latest wish and my latest prayer were for him and for my children."
As the Emperor Alexander gazed upon her lifeless remains, he exclaimed, "She is no more; that woman whom France named the Beneficent; that angel of goodness is no more. Those who have known Josephine can never forget her. She dies regretted by her offspring, her friends, and her contemporaries."
In the same church, opposite to the tomb of Josephine, stands the monument of her daughter Hortense. Her life was another of those tragedies of which this world has been so full. Her son, the present President of France, has reared to her memory a tasteful monument of various colored marble, emblematic, as it were, of the vicissitudes of her eventful life. The monument bears the inscription—"To Queen Hortense, by Prince Louis Bonaparte." She is represented kneeling in sorrowful meditation. As I stood by their silent monuments, and thought of the bodies mouldering to dust beneath them, the beautiful lines of Kirke White rose most forcibly to my mind:
"Life's labor done, securely laid
In this their last retreat,
Unheeded o'er their silent dust
The storms of life shall beat."
From Ruel we rode slowly along, through vineyards and fields of grain, with neither hedges nor fences to obstruct the view, for about two miles, when we arrived at the stone wall and iron entrance-gate of the chateau of Malmaison. The concierge, a pleasant-looking woman, came from the porter's lodge, and looking through the bars of the gate very politely and kindly told us that we could not be admitted. I gave her my passport, my card, and a copy of the Life of Josephine, which I had written in America, and requested her to take them to the head man of the establishment, and to say to him that I had written the life of Josephine, and that I had come to France to visit localities which had been made memorable by Napoleon and Josephine, and that I was exceedingly desirous to see Malmaison. The good woman most obligingly took my parcel, and tripping away as lightly as a girl, disappeared in the windings of the well-graveled avenue, skirted with trees and shrubbery. In about ten minutes she returned, and smiling and shaking her head, said that the orders were positive, and that we could not be admitted. I then wrote a note to the keeper, in French, which I fear was not very classical, informing him "that I was writing the life of Napoleon; that it was a matter of great importance that I should see Malmaison, his favorite residence; that I had recently been favored with a private audience with the Prince President, and that he had assured me that he would do every thing in his power to facilitate my investigations, and that he would give me free access to all sources of information. But that as I knew the chateau belonged to the Queen of Spain, I had made no efforts to obtain from the French authorities a ticket of admission." Then for the first time I reflected that the proper course for me to have pursued was to have called upon the Spanish embassador, a very gentlemanly and obliging man, who would unquestionably have removed every obstacle from my way. Giving the good woman a franc to quicken her steps, again she disappeared, and after a considerable lapse of time came back, accompanied by the keeper. He was a plain, pleasant-looking man, and instead of addressing me with that angry rebuff, which, in all probability in America one, under similar circumstances, would have encountered, he politely touched his hat, and begged that I would not consider his refusal as caprice in him, but that the Queen of Spain did not allow any visitors to enter the grounds of Malmaison. The French are so polite, that an American is often mortified by the consciousness of his own want of corresponding courtesy. Assuming, however, all the little suavity at my command, I very politely touched my hat, and said: "My dear sir, is it not rather a hard case? I have crossed three thousand miles of stormy ocean to see Malmaison. Here I am at the very gate of the park, and these iron bars won't let me in." The kind-hearted man hesitated for a moment, looked down upon the ground as if deeply thinking, and then said, "Let me see your passports again, if you please." My companion eagerly drew out his passport, and pointed to the cabalistic words—"Bearer of dispatches." Whether this were the talisman which at last touched the heart of our friend I know not, but suddenly relenting he exclaimed, with a good-natured smile, "Eh bien! Messieurs, entrez, entrez," and rolling the iron gate back upon its hinges, we found ourselves in the enchanting park of Malmaison.
Passing along a beautiful serpentine avenue, embowered in trees and shrubbery, and presenting a scene of very attractive rural beauty, we came in sight of the plain, comfortable home-like chateau. A pleasant garden, smiling with flowers, bloomed in solitude before the windows of the saloon, and a statue of Napoleon, in his familiar form, was standing silently there. An indescribable air of loneliness and yet of loveliness was spread over the scene. It was one of the most lovely of May days. Nearly all the voices of nature are pensive; the sighing of the zephyr and the wailing of the tempest, the trickling of the rill and the roar of the ocean, the vesper of the robin and the midnight cry of the wild beast in his lair. Nature this morning and in this scene displayed her mood of most plaintive pathos. There was Napoleon, standing in solitude in the garden. All was silence around him. The chateau was empty and deserted. Josephine and Hortense were mouldering to dust in the damp tombs of Ruel. The passing breeze rustled the leaves of the forest, and the birds with gushes of melody sung their touching requiems. Shall I be ashamed to say that emotions uncontrollable overcame me, and I freely wept? No! For there are thousands who will read this page who will sympathize with me in these feelings, and who will mingle their tears with mine.
We entered the house, and walked from room to room through all its apartments. Here was the library of Napoleon, for he loved books. Christina has converted it into a billiard-room, for she loves play. Here was the little boudoir where Napoleon and Josephine met in their hours of sacred confidence, and the tapestry and the window curtains, in their simplicity, remain as arranged by Josephine's own hands. Here is the chamber in which Josephine died, and the very bed upon which she breathed her last. The afternoon sun was shining brilliantly in through the windows, which we had thrown open, as it shone forty years ago upon the wasted form and pallid cheek of the dying Josephine. The forest, so secluded and beautiful, waved brightly in the sun and in the breeze then as now; the birds then filled the air with the same plaintive melody. The scene of nature and of art—house, lawn, shrubbery, grove, cascade, grotto—remains unchanged; but the billows of revolution and death have rolled over the world-renowned inmates of Malmaison, and they are all swept away.
An old-serving man, eighty years of age, conducted us through the silent and deserted apartments. The affection with which he spoke of Napoleon and of Josephine amounted almost to adoration. He was in their service when the Emperor and Empress, arm-in-arm, sauntered through these apartments and these shady walks. There must have been some most extraordinary fascination in Napoleon, by which he bound to him so tenaciously all those who were brought near his person. His history in that respect is without a parallel. No mortal man, before or since, has been so enthusiastically loved. The column in the Place Vendome is still hung with garlands of flowers by the hand of affection. It is hardly too much to say, that the spirit of Napoleon, emerging from his monumental tomb under the dome of the Invalids, still reigns in France. Louis Napoleon is nothing in himself. His power is but the reflected power of the Emperor.
We passed from the large saloon, upon the smooth green lawn, which has so often resounded with those merry voices, which are now all hushed in death. We looked upon trees which Napoleon and Josephine had planted, wandered through the walks along which their footsteps had strayed, reclined upon the seats where they had found repose, and culling many wild flowers, as memorials of this most beautiful spot, with lingering footsteps retired. Nothing which I have seen in France has interested me so much as Malmaison. Galignani's Guide-Book says: "The park and extensive gardens in which Josephine took so much delight are nearly destroyed. The chateau still exists, but the Queen Dowager of Spain, to whom Malmaison now belongs, has strictly forbidden all visits." This appears to be, in part, a mistake. The park and the grounds immediately around the mansion, as well as the chateau itself, remain essentially as they were in the time of Josephine. France contains no spot more rich in touching associations.