From a painting by René-Théodore Berthon,
in the possession of the painter's descendants in Canada.
The same years which saw the extinction of the remnants of legislative independence saw likewise the establishment of six state prisons, in which were to be confined those disaffected persons who were too powerful to be left at liberty, but whose trials in open court would have revealed troublesome facts. The censorship of the press was likewise reëstablished with iron rigidity, and the publishers purchased the meager immunities they were permitted to enjoy by the payment of whatever pensions the Emperor chose to grant to needy men of letters. Chénier the poet, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the author of "Paul and Virginia," and others enjoyed, in addition to decorations of the Legion of Honor, substantial incomes that were virtually paid by their fellow-craftsmen; while a chosen few—including Gros, Gérard, Guérin, Lagrange, Monge, and Laplace—were elevated to the new baronage. Even Carnot did not hesitate to accept employment and place from Napoleon. At first he solicited a loan for the relief of his urgent necessities. This the Emperor made unnecessary by ordering the War Office to pay all arrears in his rations and other perquisites, by giving him a commission to prepare a volume on fortification, and by according him a pension of ten thousand francs. The ponderous sledge-hammer of the censorship was apparently forged to kill a gnat. Nothing is known to the history of literature so subservient and humble as the conduct of the great majority of French writers and artists under the Empire.
There was one exception—Mme. de Staël. That overestimated woman had gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers, more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from Paris; the Directory kept her under watch at Coppet, and ordered her arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations were boundless, and Mallet du Pan, royalist agent, said that she shamelessly flaunted her charms on public occasions. In 1796, aspiring to rule the country through her friends, she wrote to Bonaparte, who was in Italy, that the widow Beauharnais was far from possessing the necessary qualities to supplement those of a genius such as he was, and on his return to Paris she at once made suspicious advances to win his favor. Bourrienne declares that he saw one of her letters to Bonaparte, in which she flatly stated that they two, she herself and her correspondent, had been created for each other. Mention has elsewhere been made of the coldness with which Bonaparte treated her when by her own request she was presented to him in Talleyrand's drawing-room. Not long afterward, at the reception given by the minister of foreign affairs to the conqueror of Italy, the indefatigable seeker for notoriety addressed the latter once again.
The scene is given in the memoirs of Arnault. At first she plied her suit with fulsome compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French, Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes, I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy rejoinder, as the harried and disgusted soldier turned on his heel. Somewhat later she said to Lucien in a melting voice, "I am but a fool in my desire to please your brother. I am at a loss when I wish to converse with him. I choose my language and modify my expressions; I want to make him think of me and occupy himself with me. It ends in my being and feeling as silly as a goose." When the complacent Lucien reported the language his brother replied: "I know her thoroughly.... She declared to one who informed me that since I would neither love her nor permit her to love me, there was nothing left but for her to hate me, as she could not remain indifferent. What a virago!" In a letter to Joseph, dated March nineteenth, 1800, the future Emperor wrote: "M. de Staël is in the depths of misery, and his wife is giving dinners and balls. If you should continue to see her, would it not be well to have the woman allow her husband one thousand or one thousand two hundred francs a month? Have we already reached a time when, without any protest from decent people, not merely morality but the most sacred ties which bind children to their parents can be trampled under foot? Suppose we judge Mme. de Staël as we should a man,—only, of course, as a man inheriting the fortune of M. de Necker,—one who had long enjoyed the prerogatives of a distinguished name, and who should leave his wife in misery while he lived in abundance: could we associate with a man like that?"
Soon afterward the battle of Marengo was fought. All her passion being now turned into hate, the scheming woman openly desired Bonaparte's defeat. Thenceforward she was an avowed and bitter enemy; he would have called her a conspirator. The ten years of her banishment, as she herself declared, were occupied in wandering from court to court in England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged in the task of undermining the Emperor's name and fame, and in fomenting the coalitions which eventually ruined him. As Bonaparte became an ultra-imperialist she became an ultra-liberal. Her book on Germany, published in 1810, was a laudation, in the main just and fair, of a regenerated land; but it held up to France as a model the achievements of the country which was now her bitterest foe. The censors gave it a fictitious renown by ordering its complete suppression.
When, in November, 1810, the decennial prizes, instituted as a spur to literature and science, were distributed, the judges could find nothing in science later than 1803 worthy of their favor; but the prize-winners, old as they were, were all men of real distinction. The names of the literary men who were crowned are now known only to the student of history. Napoleon demanded why the name of Chateaubriand had been omitted from the list, as it was. He may have remembered, as one of his detractors suggests, that in that writer's great book the Roman doctrine of obedience to constituted authority was attractively presented; or else, and more probably, he may have wished his list of authors to be more brilliant. The Emperor may have instituted those prizes, as his apologists declared he himself said that he did, to keep active minds from occupying themselves with politics; but the exhibition of how the Empire had crushed out originality and fecundity in the French brain must have appalled him, whatever were his thoughts.
During the winter of 1810-11 Napoleon's private life was virtually devoted to beneficence. In addition to the favors granted to Carnot, he lavished money on other objects, some not so worthy. Canova, who had been called from Rome to make a portrait-statue of the Empress, obtained a substantial grant for the learned societies of that city. Chénier, like Carnot, had been a pronounced adversary of the Empire. He now sought employment under it, and was made inspector-general of the university, an office which he did not live long to enjoy. All the old favorites were remembered in a general distribution of good things. Talleyrand having just lost an immense sum by the failure of a trusted bank, the Emperor came to his relief by purchasing one of his minister's most splendid palaces for more than two million francs. The court resided sometimes at St. Cloud, sometimes at Rambouillet, sometimes at the Trianon, but for the most part at Fontainebleau, where the ceremonious life, to which all concerned were now well accustomed, was marked by none of the old awkwardness and friction, but ran as brilliantly as lavish expenditure could make it.
The pregnancy of the Empress was celebrated with great festivities, during which Napoleon performed one of his most applauded acts—the endowment of a vast maternity hospital. The Empress was brought into great prominence as the president of a society consisting of a thousand noble ladies under whose patronage the charity was placed.
The unconcealed and ecstatic delight of the prospective father found vent in delicate and tender attention to the mother of his child, and until her deliverance he was a gentle, devoted, and considerate husband. His whole nature seemed transformed. When in the early morning of March twentieth, 1811, word was brought that the Empress was in labor, and that a false presentation made it of instant necessity to choose between the life of the mother and that of the child, the feelings of the Emperor can better be imagined than described.
If the expected heir should die his dynasty would be jeopardized, his enemies would once more be making appointments over his grave, the hopes of a lifetime might be shattered. But there was not a moment's wavering. "Think only of the mother," he cried. The fears of the attending physician were vain, after all, and the man-child, coming without a cry into the world and lying breathless for seven minutes as if hesitating to accept or decline his destiny, finally gave a wail as at last he caught the breath of life. Napoleon turned, caught up his treasure, and pressed it to his bosom. A hundred guns announced the birth, and the city burst into jubilations, which were reëchoed throughout Europe from Dantzic to Cadiz. Festival succeeded festival, and for an interval men believed that the temple of Janus would be again closed. No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this one. The devotion of the father was passionate and unwavering. It lasted even after he had been deserted and betrayed by the mother, after the child had been estranged and turned into an Austrian prince.[Back to Contents]