Queen Caroline Murat.
Caroline received Madame Récamier with an alacrity which was the more affectionate that the oppression of tyranny made itself felt as far as Portici. Nevertheless, the city which possesses Virgil's[409] tomb and Tasso's[410] cradle, the city in which Horace[411], Livy[412], Boccaccio[413] and Sannazaro[414] lived, in which Durante[415] and Cimarosa[416] were born, had been beautified by its new master. Order had been restored; the lazzaroni no longer played at ball with human heads to amuse Admiral Nelson[417] and Lady Hamilton[418]. The excavations at Pompeii had been extended; a road wound over the Posilipo[419], into whose flanks I had penetrated, in 1803[420], to go to ask at Liternum[421] for Scipio's retreat. Those new royalties of a military dynasty had brought back life to regions in which before them the moribund languor of an old race of kings had made itself manifest. Robert Guiscard[422], William Iron-arm[423], Roger[424] and Tancred[425] seemed to have returned, minus the chivalry.
Madame Récamier was in Naples in February 1814; where was I then? In my Vallée-aux-Loups, commencing the story of my life. I was concerning myself with the sports of my childhood to the sound of the foreign soldier's footsteps. The woman whose name was to close these Memoirs was strolling on the marine of Baja. Had I not a presentiment of the good which was one day to come to me from that quarter, when I was depicting the Parthenopian seduction in the Martyrs:
"Every morning, so soon as dawn began to appear, I went under a portico.... The sun rose before me... it illumined with its tenderest fires the mountain-chain of Salernum[426], the blue sea studded with the white sails of the fishermen, the islands of Capræ[427], Œnaria[428], Prochyta[429]... the cape of Misenum[430] and Baiæ[431] with all its enchantments.
"Flowers and fruits moist with dew are less sweet and less fresh than the Neapolitan landscape emerging from the shades of night. I was always surprised, on reaching the portico, to find myself beside the sea; for the waves in that spot scarce gave forth a fountain's gentle murmur. In an ecstasy before that picture, I leant against a pillar and, void of thoughts, desires, or plans, remained whole hours breathing a delicious air. The charm was so intense that it seemed to me that that divine air was transforming my own substance, and that, with an unspeakable pleasure, I was rising towards the firmament like a pure spirit....
"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days.... Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their extreme voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432] was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound....
"To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory, we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby. Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be watching the sports of the Nereids[433]."
Madame Récamier met, at Naples, Count von Neipperg[434] and the Duc de Rohan-Chabot[435]: one was destined to climb to the eagle's nest, the other to wear the purple. They said of the latter that he was devoted to red, having worn the coat of a chamberlain, the uniform of a light-horseman of the Guard, and the robe of a cardinal.
The Duc de Rohan.
The Duc de Rohan was very pretty; he warbled plaintive ballads, painted little water-colours and was eminent for his coquettish and studied dress. When he became an abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron, had all a martyr's elegance. He used to preach at dusk, in sombre oratories, before devout women, taking care, with the aid of two or three artistically-distributed tapers, to light up his pale features in mezzotint, like a picture[436].
We cannot, at first sight, explain to ourselves how men whose names rendered them stupid by sheer force of pride came to accept wages from a parvenu. Looking more closely into this aptness for entering service, we find that it proceeded naturally from their manners: accustomed to the domestic condition, little recked they if the livery was changed, provided the master were lodged at the castle under the same sign-board. Bonaparte's contempt appraised them at their true value; the great soldier, abandoned by his own people, said to a great lady:
"As a matter of fact, there are only yourselves that know how to serve."
Religion and death have passed the sponge over a few weaknesses, very pardonable after all, of the Cardinal de Rohan. A Christian priest, he consummated his sacrifice at Besançon, succouring the unhappy, feeding the poor, clothing the orphan, and wearing out in good works his life, the course of which was naturally shortened by deplorable ill-health.