Vieillard was an anecdotist. He recounted smilingly the following:— Towards the close of 1807 Queen Hortense, who of her own accord lived in Paris, wrote to the King Louis that she could not exist any longer without seeing him, that she could not do without him, and that she was about to come to the Hague. The King said, "She is with child." He sent for his minister Van Maanen, showed him the Queen's letter, and added, "She is coming. Very good. Our two chambers communicate by a door; the Queen will find it walled up." Louis took his royal mantle in earnest, for he exclaimed, "A King's mantle shall never serve as coverlet to a harlot." The minister Van Maanen, terrified, sent word of this to the Emperor. The Emperor fell into a rage, not against Hortense, but against Louis. Nevertheless Louis held firm; the door was not walled up, but his Majesty was; and when the Queen came he turned his back upon her. This did not prevent Napoleon III. from being born.
A suitable number of salvoes of cannon saluted this birth.
Such was the story which, in the summer of 1840, in the house called La Terrasse, before witnesses, among whom was Ferdinand B——, Marquis de la L——, a companion during boyhood of the author of this book, was told by M. Vieillard, an ironical Bonapartist, an arrant sceptic.
Besides Vieillard there was Vaudrey, whom Louis Bonaparte made a General at the same time as Espinasse. In case of need a Colonel of Conspiracies can become a General of Ambuscades.
There was Fialin,[14] the corporal who became a Duke.
There was Fleury, who was destined to the glory of travelling by the side of the Czar on his buttocks.
There was Lacrosse, a Liberal turned Clerical, one of those Conservatives who push order as far as the embalming, and preservation as far as the mummy: later on a senator.
There was Larabit, a friend of Lacrosse, as much a domestic and not less a senator.
There was Canon Coquereau, the "Abbé of La Belle-Poule." The answer is known which he made to a princess who asked him, "What is the Elysée?" It appears that one can say to a princess what one cannot say to a woman.
There was Hippolyte Fortoul, of the climbing genus, of the worth of a Gustave Planche or of some Philarête Chasles, an ill-tempered writer who had become Minister of the Marine, which caused Béranger to say, "This Fortoul knows all the spars, including the 'greased pole.'"