Читать книгу Memoirs of the Empress Josephine - Madame de Rémusat - Страница 9

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It was difficult to attend to personal interests in those days; one could hardly help being diverted from them, and engrossed solely by the spectacle of France and Europe. Curiosity would naturally outweigh ambition in a family such as we are depicting. My grandfather did nevertheless think of entering the administration, and once more revived his project, hitherto doomed to disappointment, of gaining admittance to the Council of State; but he was as supine about it as before. Had he entered the administration, he would only have been following the example of the majority of the former officials of the Empire, for the Bonapartist Opposition did not come into existence until the latter days of the Monarchy. The members of the Imperial family lived in constant and friendly intercourse with the new régime, or rather with the reinstated old régime. The Empress Josephine was treated with great respect, and the Emperor Alexander frequently visited her at Malmaison. She wished to take up a dignified and fitting position, and she confided to her lady-in-waiting that she thought of asking the title of High Constable for her son Eugène, showing thereby that she scarcely understood the spirit of the Restoration. Queen Hortense, who afterward became the bitter enemy of the Bourbons, and was concerned in numerous conspiracies, obtained the Duchy of Saint Leu, for which she intended to return thanks in person to Louis XVIII. All projects of this kind had, however, to be abandoned; for the Empress Josephine was suddenly carried off by malignant sore throat in March, 1814, and the last link that bound my kinsfolk to the Bonaparte family was sundered for ever.

The Bourbons seemed to make a point of annoying and depressing those very persons whom their Government should have endeavored to conciliate, and by slow degrees a belief gained ground that their reign would be of short duration, and that France, just then more in love with equality than with liberty, would demand to be placed once more under the yoke which had seemed to be shattered; in fact, that the days of Imperial splendor and misery would return. It was, therefore, with less amazement than might be supposed that my grandfather learned one day from a friend that the Emperor had escaped from Elba and landed at Cannes. Historical events seem more astounding to those who read of them than to eye-witnesses. Those who knew Bonaparte could readily believe him capable of again putting France and Frenchmen in peril for the sake of a selfish scheme. His return was, however, a tremendous event, and every one had to think not only of the political future, but also of his own. Even those who, like M. de Rémusat, had not publicly taken any political side, and who only wanted to be left in repose and obscurity, had everything to lose, and were bound to provide against eventualities. The general suspense did not last long; even before the Emperor’s entry into Paris, M. Réal came to announce to M. de Rémusat that he was sentenced to exile together with twelve or fifteen others, among whom was M. Pasquier.

An event still more serious than exile, and which left a deeper trace in my father’s memory, occurred between the first news of the return of Napoleon and his arrival at the Tuileries. On the day after that on which the landing was publicly announced, Mme. de Nansouty hurried to her sister’s house, full of dismay at all that she had been told of the persecution to which the opponents of the vindictive and all-powerful Emperor were about to be exposed. She told my grandparents that a rigorous inquisition by the police was to be put in action; that M. Pasquier apprehended molestation, and that everything in the house which could give rise to suspicion must be got rid of. My grandmother, who might not otherwise have thought of danger, remembered with alarm that a manuscript highly calculated to compromise her husband, her sister, her brother-in-law, and her friends, was in the house. For many years, probably from her first appearance at Court, she had been in the habit of taking notes daily of the events and conversations which came under her notice, while her memory of them was fresh. She had recorded nearly everything she saw and heard, at Paris, at St. Cloud, and at Malmaison. For twelve years she had transferred, not only events and circumstances, but studies of character and disposition, to the pages of her journal. This journal was kept in the form of a correspondence. It consisted of a series of letters, written from Court to a friend from whom nothing was concealed. The author well knew all the value of these fictitious letters, which recalled her whole life, with its most precious and most painful recollections. Ought she to risk, for what would appear to others only literary or sentimental selfishness, the peace, the liberty, nay, even the life of those she loved? No one was aware of the existence of this manuscript, except her husband and Mme. Chéron, the wife of the Prefect of that name, a very old and attached friend. Her thoughts turned to this lady, who had once before taken charge of the dangerous manuscript, and she hastened to seek her. Unfortunately Mme. Chéron was from home, and not likely to return for a considerable time. What was to be done? My grandmother came back, greatly distressed, and, without further reflection or delay, threw her manuscripts into the fire. My father came into the room just as she was burning the last sheets, somewhat cautiously, lest the flame should reach too high. He was then seventeen, and has often described the scene to me—the remembrance of it was most painful to him. He thought at first that his mother was merely destroying a copy of the memoirs, which he had never read, and that the precious original manuscript was safely concealed. He threw the last sheets into the fire with his own hand, attaching but little importance to the action. “Few deeds,” he used to say, “after I learned all the truth, have I ever so bitterly regretted.”

From the very first, the author and her son so deeply lamented what they had done—for they learned almost immediately that the sacrifice was uncalled for—that for years they could not speak of it between themselves or to my grandfather. The latter bore his exile with much philosophy. He was not forbidden to dwell in France, but only in Paris and its neighborhood, and it was decided that they should all await the passing of the storm in Languedoc, where he possessed an estate which he had bought back from the heirs of M. de Bastard, his wife’s grandfather, and which had long been neglected. The family removed, therefore, to Laffitte, where my father afterward passed so many years, now in the midst of political agitation, again in quiet study. In after days he again came thither from exile; for the sufferings of good citizens from absolute power were not to be restricted to the year 1815, and Napoleons have returned to France from a greater distance than the Isle of Elba.

My grandfather started for Laffitte on March 13th, and his family joined him there a few days afterward. At Laffitte they passed the three months of that reign, shorter but still more fatal than the first, which has been called “The Hundred Days.” There my father entered upon his literary career, not as yet producing original works, but translating Pope, Cicero, and Tacitus. His only original writings were his songs. The family lived quietly, unitedly, and almost happily, waiting the end of a tragedy of which they foresaw the dénouement, and at Laffitte they received the news of Waterloo. They heard at the same time of the abdication of Napoleon, and that M. de Rémusat was appointed Prefect of Haute-Garonne, by a decree of July 12, 1815. This appointment was quite to the taste of my grandfather, for it placed him once more in office, without involving him in the parade of a court; but it was less pleasing to his wife, who regretted Paris and her old friends there, and who dreaded the disturbances at Toulouse, at that time a prey to the violence of southern Royalism—“the White Terror,” as it was then called.

The new Prefect immediately set out for Toulouse, and was greeted on his arrival with the news that General Ramel, notwithstanding that he had hoisted the white flag on the Capitol, had been assassinated. Such are the injustice and violence of party spirit, even when victorious; nay, especially when victorious!

But, however interesting this episode of our national troubles may be, it is not necessary to dwell on them here. The principal personage in these Memoirs is not the Prefect, but Mme. de Rémusat. My grandmother, anxious about the course of events, and perhaps afraid of the vehemence of her son’s opinions, which were little suited to his father’s official position, sent him back to Paris, to his great satisfaction.

Then ensued a correspondence between them which will make both of them known to us, and will perhaps depict the writer of these Memoirs more clearly than do the Memoirs themselves.

As, however, the latter work only is in question at present, it is not necessary to give in detail the history of the period subsequent to 1815. The administration of the department, which commenced under such gloomy auspices, was, for a period of nineteen months, extremely difficult. While the son, mixing in very Liberal society in Paris, adopted the opinions of advanced constitutional Royalism, which did little more than tolerate the Bourbons, the father, amid totally different surroundings, underwent a similar mental process, and placed himself by word and deed in the front rank of those officials of the King’s Government who were the least Royalist and the most Liberal. He was a just and moderate man, a lover of law, neither an aristocrat nor a bigot. The people of Toulouse were all that he was not; nevertheless he was successful there, and left behind him a kindly memory, which lapsed as the men of his time disappeared, but of which my father has more than once found traces. These early days of constitutional liberty, even in a province which did not afterward put its theories boldly in practice, are curious to contemplate.

The light of that liberty illumined all that the Empire had left in darkness. Opinions, ideas, hatred, passions, came to life. The Government of the Bourbons was represented by a married priest, M. de Talleyrand, and a regicide Jacobin, M. Fouché; but even they could not oppose the reactionary tendency of the time, and the Liberal policy did not triumph until the accession of MM. Decazes, Pasquier, Molé, and Royer-Collard to the ministry, and the passing of the famous decree of the 5th of September. The new policy was of course advantageous to those who had practiced it beforehand, and there could be no ill will toward the Prefect on account of the failure of the Liberal party in the elections of Haute-Garonne. So soon as the ministry was firmly established, and as M. Lainé had succeeded M. de Vaublanc, my grandfather was appointed Prefect of Lille. My father records in a letter already quoted the effect of these events on the mind of Mme. de Rémusat:

“The nomination of my father to Lille brought my mother back into the midst of the great stir of public opinion, which was soon to declare itself as it had not done since 1789. Her intelligence, her reason all her feelings and all her convictions, were about to make a great step in advance. The Empire, after awakening her interest in public affairs and enabling her to understand them, subsequently directed her mind toward a high moral aim, by inspiring her with a horror of tyranny. Hence came her desire for a government of order, founded on law, reason, and the spirit of the nation; hence a certain leaning toward the forms of the English constitution. Her stay at Toulouse and the reaction of 1815 gave her such a knowledge of social realities as she could never have acquired in the salons of Paris, enlightening her as to the results and the causes of the Revolution, and the needs and sentiments of the nation. She understood, in a general way, on which side lay true help, strength, life, and right. She learned that a new France had been called into existence, and what it was, and that it was for and by this new France that government must be carried on.”