THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 1 July 1903, Page 77

THE SKETCHER.

I. When the Austrian Emperor and the rest of his numerous family were flying from Vienna before the successful invasion of Napoleon, nobody was more bitter in the expression of her hatred of the successful soldier than Marie Louise. She was a profoundly devoted daughter, she was a firm believer in the divine right of ancient monarchies, she was a good Catholic, she was the niece of Marie Antoinette ; and this upstart soldier, seated on a throne by the Revolutionists who had guillotined her aunt, who crumpled t;p ancient regimes and trampled on ancient families, who had humiliated, exiled, almost beggared her adored father, represented to her an almost incredible combination of all the possibilities of evil. "I believe," she writes to a friend, "that we are approaching the end of the world, and that our oppressor is none other than Anti-Christ." She hears and believes all kinds of horrors of the soldiers of this dreadful tyrant. In the Tyrol they have, she hears, robbed, sacked, burned; have committed sacrilege in the churches; have tortured priests till three of them died. When peace is announced, and .when a meeting thus becomes inevitable between the"' hated conqueror and the adored conquered, "I do hope," she writes, "that he won't come near where mamma and I are stopping; foe I would dread a visit from him. The very sight of this creature would be the worst of all my sufferings, and it is just like him to intrude himself upon us."

11. But it is not very long after this that there comes threatening presages of a worse sacrifice than any she had dreamed : the duty of giving her body md her soul for ever to this man whom she at once hates and dreads as an inhuman monster. The papers beginning to forecast the coming divorce of Josephine anticipate events so far as to suggest the names of her possible successors-^" ard among those names Marie Louise is horrified to find her own. "Papa loves me too much to use force towards me in a matter so important, ' she writes to one friend. "I pity the poor princess Napoleon will choose," she writes on the same day to another fiiend ; "I am sure that I at least am safe from being made such a victim of politics." But only a few days have elapsed when her views as to the "future have begun to change. "I place my fate in the hands of Pj-ovidence," she says. "If it should be my misfortune to have to sacrifice my personal happiness to the good of my country I am ready to clo so." "This marriage gives pleasure to my father," she s.iys a little later, "and though separation from my family always will make me miserable, I will have the consolation of having obeyed his wishes. And Providence, it is my firm belief, directs the lot of us princesses in a special manner; and in obeying my father I feel I am obeying Providence." " Well might the grim Metternich declare to Napoleon when the marriage was being negotiated, and when the wishes and, perhaps, prejudices of Marie Louise were mentioned as possible obstacles— -well might that ancient and hoary sinner declare, '"Oar ptincesses are not in the habit of choosing their husbands in accordance with their personal feelings ; the respect which so good and devoted a daughter has for the will of her father makes me hope- that wj shall find no obstacles on her side." In melodrama, with all its inconsequence and unreality, the author is daring who lepresents the daughter of the broken-down merchant asked to sell herself for the sake of the bankrupt father to the wealthy man she hates and dreads. Royalty is more daring than melodrama: Marie Louise is sold to Napoleon in the interests of a bankrupt throne.

111. The Viennese who crowded the streets of Vienna to witnes3 the departure of Marie Louise, to many a French monarch were reminded inevitably of the journey of that other Archduchess, 40 years before, which, beginning in equal splendour, had ended in the rags, the hunger of the Conciergerie, and the bloody execution in the Place de la Concorde ; and doubtless Marie Louise, just 18 years of age, must have had many an inner shudder as she recalled, as she was bound to do, that dreadful and affrighting precedent. But when the "reached the frontier all was done not only to make her forget sorrow, but also to forget her native land. She was stripped of all her Austrian clothes, and French clothes were substituted for them ; all her Austrian servants were sent home ; even the little lapdog which she had taken with her was sent back to Vienna. " The Emperor detests dogs," said Caroline, the Emperor's sister. That masterful, truly Napoleonic woman, with the brutality, the selfishness, the perfidy of the race, with a great want of tact, has been sent to escort the young and trembling girl to her new destinies. It was the beginning of the hatred which Marie Louise always had for Caroline of Naples. On the other hand, the young Empress, brought up in poverty and self-denial, is smothered in jewels; £16,000 worth are thrown at her almost on herarrival on the frontier ; and all the best dressmakers of Paris, and all the bootmakers, and all the rest of the vast army

that ministers to the adornment of women have been exhausted in efforts to give her a wardrobe that will adorn and dazzle her. The mind staggers almost at the figures. There are 12 dozen chemises, 80 dozen handkerchiefs, 48 pairs of shoes, her wedding dress coSt £480, she has long dresses, short dresses, ball dresses, mantles, hunting dresses ; altogether her trousseau cost £17,000. The jewels, including those already mentioned, cost something like £50,000. And a curious little fact which should be noted as characteristic of Napoleon and of rhe marriage is that he himself sees every single thing in this huge collection of female adornment, admires them, and criticises them. Josephine was the only woman he Lad ever really Wiown, and she" had too well taught him the lesson of the great part clothes played in some women's lives. His own disposition and his experience in politics had al«o taught him to make appeals to the sordid and material rather than to the spiritual and unselfish ; if he cannot win thi-: young girl through the heart, he intends doing so through her vanity.

IV. There are letters from Marie Louise to her father from the diffc-ient tow..s she passes on her way to the fionticr; underneath all their protests of lier -.eadiness to obey him there are glimpses of hor warring soul. She has to pa's over bad roads in | jolting carriages; to rise at all horns; to keep going on, on, tow aids the dreaded end of the journey, whether well or ill, tired or fresh ; at night she does not sleap because her fears keep her awake. All this she suggests rather than says ; and when &he thinks she has complained too much, and fearing lest her words should convey a reproach. sli3 cries, '"Oh! God has given" me strength . . in Him alone I have confidence." "I sk-ll be all right by-and-bye ; I will find consolation in the thought 'that I have done my duty to you, for it is for you that I have made this sacrifice." "A* cold shudder passed over me," she says in another. "Oh, how different these' French ladies are from our Viennese," she says She still hates the French — pc,=siblv she always aid hate them and already she is worried by Caroline of Naples; above all, she has been wounded by the refusal to allow her to take her little dog with her to France, though she tries to believe that it is not the Emperor's fault, but that of Caroline. And. finally, in one of the letters— it is on Hie day when Napoleon has taken the trouble to send her three pheasants he has shot himself by a courier — she uUer* th's almost 1 piercing cry from her heart : " I beg you, 1 my dearest father, to pray feivently for me. I will do all my very best to give you the consolation you expect from me."

V. How is it, meantime, with this husband, the approach to whom is regarded with such tenor? If she had only been able to penetrate through space, and see his proceedings and his humour us fl;e is approaching, she might well have been reassrured. Never was bride more impatiently expected; never was bridegroom more ftven&h in anticipation and desire. At first he is able to distract his mind by attending to everything connected with the marriage. This" marvel among men has this among his many other extraordinary powers: that he can interest himself in one set oi details as much as in another. He who surprised his stuff by telling them that in their reports about the strength of the coast line extending from the south of Spain to the Baltic they had omitted two guns that were at Ostend was able to .spend hours in arianging the furniture in the Empress's rooms ; in dictating to the head of the police the arrangements and precedence of the crowds of hi«h officials and aristocrats that would assemble to pay homage in the halls of the Tuilenes ; to test the stiength of the staircases; to count the number of the soldiers who would form the guard ; to make 'jut the plaj bills for the theatres, classical and popular; to settle the "tips," the charitable subscriptions, the remissions of sentences ; to say nothing of all the poets, /Jid vaudevillistes, and painters, and engravers, with whom he debated the form in winch they intended to blazon forth the great and auspicious event that was about to come off.

VI. But ulthvlely he could find no other occupation, large or email, to kill the time in Paris; so he rushed off to Compiegne, that State palace which has played, which still plays, so large a part in the inner history of the rulers of France. It was there that Louis XV received Marie Antoinette; it was there, in th<.' last generation, that Louis Napoleon brought together all the kings of the world ; it was there, the other day, that President Loubet received the Czar of Russia. At Compiegne Napoleon again resorts to all kinds of expedients to kill time, and again loses himself in the minutest details He orders the bath-room to be adorned with curtains of real cashmere ; ho coaches up his dancing — just fancy the conqueror of the world trying a waltz !— and he busies, himself in trying on his robes, and even the shoes he will have to wear in the coming festivities. He is also careful to remove from the Palace everything that recalls the victories in which Austria was beaten ; from those invited he leaves out his step-son Eugen and his wife— among f he few that were attached to him— because they are Viceroys of the kingdom of Italy, torn from the grasp of the father of Marie Louise. But even these details have come to an end, and the Emperor, in his impatience, sets out, long before the appointed time, for the city of Soissons, where the first interview is to take place between him and his bride. Tents of purple and of gold have been erected ; a set of rooms has been prepared for him in the chanedterie ; Marie Louise is to have a different set of rooms at the chateau ; everything is done, in short, to maintain the strict letter of etiquette, and also to safeguard a situation not without difficulty.. For she who is

coming is in a position of extreme delicacy. She is married, and yet not a wife — that is to say, she has been m.irried by proxy in Vienna to Napoleon, but the marriage in person, amid the spiritual and splendid ceremonial in preparation at Notre Dame, has yet to take place. And this girl in this anomalous position is only 18 ; has been brought up in something like the seclusion and virginal atmosphere of a~ convent ; and, timid by nature, trembles before him who is to be her master as before an almost superhuman and yet inferior being — the terrible god of war, before whom thrones tremble and millions shake, and, at the same time, the poor parvenu who has ri^en from a petty estate in Corsica, from a family half gentle, half plebeian!

VII. It is the more necessary to -dwell upon this aspect of this moment in the lives of these two beings to understand -.he curious scenes which followed. Napoleon, 42, and unaccustomed to the softer side of life, brought up in poverty, solitude, and in garrison towns or in the camps that change with the scenes of battle, entirely without smill talk or grace, <->nd, curiously enough, more conscious than even his bride of the vast interval that yawned between his biith and hers, is also not without his misgivings. In reading the life of Napoleo.i one is so often dazzled by his extraordinary elevation above the normal man as * now and then to make one forget that he was, after all, but a man ; that granite figure which we have created of him in our imaginations, without fear and without emotion, iiresistible a« fate, cruel us the sea, can •-caroely be supposed to have evir had hot blood "coursing through his veins, flesh that felt the stings of culinary life. There is no better corrective of that conception of Napoleon — profoundly false, of course, as all conceptions that make nipn divine or demoniac instead of human always are — than the study of him while he is waiting at Sow-sons for his young bride. The daughter of the Ccesars represents to him at once a slave and a master, is to him Briseis and Cleopatra — Briseis, that beautiful being who lives for ever in the verses of Homer, the trembling slave girl whom Achillas had conquered with his sword ; Cleopatra, the divinely beautiful, for whom an Emperor threw a world away. Napoleon asks all who return from Vienna what she is like ; eagerly examines a little hurried sketch of her that an officer has taken one evening at the theatre ; he compares it with the collection of medallions of the Hapsburgs which he has made ; notes the heavy Austrian under-lip, but rejoices at it ; it is not pretty, but then it is so like the Imperial Hapsburgs — that mighty house which goes back to the twilight of history for its origins. He rubs his hands, bursts out laughing, then begins asking more questions; he never was seen in such high spirits by those who have known him"; so interested is he, indeed, in this talk about his biide that is com ng towards him that when he is told a fire has broken out in the attic of the palace he doesn't stop, but goes on asking questions about the girl who is coming. And he takes another lesson in the waltz, and tries on another cloak and another pair of shoes. Once Napoleon was called half Jupiter, half buffoon ; he is buffoon rather than Jupiter at this particular moment.

VIII. But soon he is to be both Jupiter and buffoon ; the iion conoueror that has little caio for any feelings or passions except hw own ; that goes right on straight to lna goal, whatevet he may tread under foot in the space between him and it. He learns that "his Wide is now but two days off. On March 25 she is at Nancy ; on the 26th at Vitry ; on the following day, the 27th, she is to be at Soissons, and jthey are to meet. But Napoleon cannot wait. He is a thorough Frenchman in being a gamin whenever a petticoat which he admires is in sight, and, like every Frenchman, capable of becoming a schoolboy, or perhaps I should use a better analogy if I (,aid a medical student. He who insists usually that the ordinances of the great gos-pel of etiquette shall be rigorously observed to the" very letter, who has escorts for every occasion, big and little, of the hussars or the dragoons or the guaid ; he who ought to have arrived before this young giil in all the glory of a bodyguard that would become the King of Kings, the Over-lot d of Europe — he arrives with Murat, his brother-in-law, as his only companion. Nor is this all. It has been raining cats and dogs ; he and Murat are wet to the skin. He is so impatient that he has gone four miles beyond Soissons, and is at Courcelles. Maiie Louise has not yet arrived. He — just fancy it ! — hides himself under the porch of' the church, and waits, At last the caniage of Marie Louise appeal s. Napoleon, without a word of warning, bangs open the door, rushes into the carriage, and poor Marie Louise, frightened, tiembhng, surprised, is caught in the arms and is already being kissed by this man, wet, travel-stained, too masterful to await her permission, too rude in his manners and upbringing and too impatient and direct in liis camp- room courtship to prepare her by the humble appeals of the respectful lover to the trembling maid.

IX. The whole ceremonial, prepared with such elaboration, is all overwhelmed with the same cruel shock as the armies under ancient commanders. There isn't even k stop, much less all the ceremonials intended, at Soissons ; always at full gallop, the cortege rushes on to Compiegne. There this strange couple arrive at 10 o'clock at night. Once again the elaborate programme crumples up like a cardboard before a shell : flunkeys rush distracted, interrupted in their Olympian and cast-iron etiquette ; his own family, who are assembled at the bottom of the stairs to give him and his bride a ceremonial greeting, are introduced and dismissed with a word ; the little girls with their flowers and their little reception addresses are brushed aside; and the Em-

peror is left alone with the Empress. "What were you told to do by your parents?'* asks Napoleon. "To belong to you entirely and to obey you in everything," is the reply. When the great ceremonial comes along after in Notre Dame, Marie Louise is already a wife. There is almost something Mephistophelean in tie whole business. One almost might hear in it some such shout of mocking triumph as sounds in the awful words of Richard 111. triumphant over the woman who hated him: Was ever woman in this humour wco'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?

X. " Many a German, my dear fellow,' said Napoleon, with a frankness one can scarcely admire, tc one of his cronies ; "they are the best wives in the world — good, simple, and fresh as roses." Marie Louise deserved, to some extent, this enthusiastic description of her charms; at least, at that particular moment. She is only 18£ years of age, and every girl almost is attractive at that age. She has, however, certain charms w Inch are peculiar to her country and to her own race; but, somewhat after the fashion of her race, there is little proportion or accord in her physioue. The bust is full, but the arms are thin. Her neck is beautiful, but rather too large ; <?he is sft 2in high, of, therefore, a good height ; bub her hands and her feet are so smsll as to excite at once wonder and ridicule. She is very vain of her small feet. M. Rostand, in "L'Aiglon,"' which is a savage attack upon her, repiosents her as saying, when she is tunning away, in the very agony of her husband's destiny and fall, that a, young officer, who came to see her, and found her in bed, couldn't take his eyes off her beautilul feet; but it may be doubted whether, with all her fault*. Marie Louise was capable of such egotistic frivolity in the midst of sounds of cannon, of cries of carnage, and of the break-up, amid earthquake and eclipse, of the mighty being to w horn fche had been united. The prettiest thing about her face are her light blue eyes, a little prominent, a little expressionless, but clear, and beautiful, and innocent. The face is surmounted by one of those abundant heads of fair hair which is also one of the beauties of the typical German maid. There are a few little traces in her face of an attack of smallpox which she had in her childhood ; but while the complexion is young and fresh, and the heart comparatively light, the spots do not appear ; they come out when cares have lined the face and age and good eating have coarsened the complexion.

XL By-and-bye she will reveal some qualities •which will unhappily influence her position as the Empress of so -critical and difficult a race as the French. For the moment, however, Napoleon swims on a sea of delight in his new toy, as though he were a boy in all the intoxication and exaltation of a first love. He, who said of himself with truth that politics were the only thing that really interested him, and that woman had played a small part in Jus life, whose relations with them hitherto had been fugitive — a brief and unimportant interval in the small breathing space left to him by his gigantic labouis as a ruler andsoldier — this man now accommodates himself to all the habits and fancies of his young wife. He used to take his lunch by himself in old days, and he took it standing, and in five minutes had bolted the two dishes of which it consisted, and seemed to eat hors d'eeuvre and the dessert at the same moment. Now he lunches with his wife at a regular hour, with all the necessary ceremony, and as she is a little of a glutton, after the fashion of her tace, there is a w ell-laid table. He remains al table as long as she wishes, and even loses all of that mad impatience which nude, him such a plague and a terror to all around him. In the afternoon he is again at her service for a walk or a drive, and he even waits for her when she is femininely unpunctual, and his astounded courtiers remark that instead of swearing or stamping his feet he whittles or hums a tune. He — the most punctual of men — is now two hours late at a Cabinet Council ; courtiers wait for a week before they can see him ; momentous despatches remain unopened. He takes what i\e should call h)gh tea with the Empress, and even manages to eat some of that rich pastry which, in common with every Viennese woman, she gorges ; and he, the most abstemious of men, even goes through the long and heavy dinner which she has served in accordance vi ith the models of her Austrian home. He becomes quite particular as to the kind of clothes, and even shoes, he wears ; he plays billiards and cards with her; he organises little balls; and w hen he gives private theatricals he chooses not the sonorous tragedies w Inch he himself loves, but the comic opera which, like a true Viennese, his v ife prefers. Well, this very often happens in life ; the first conquest is to the man with his strength, his brutality, his light to take possession ; the final victory is to the woman, with her innumerable appeals and powers and subtleties. The man who rushes into the carriage at Courcelles, who was so brutal and masterful at Compiegne, is another being a few months after. "I'm sure," said Marie Louise to Metternich, "that the universal belief at Vienna is that I am suffering agonies every day. The truth is often stranger than fiction. I'm not afraid of Napoleon, but I almost begin to think that he's afraid of me."

XII. The young wife wag as little suited, however, as the somewhat elderly husband for the life of voting loveis. Napoleon, among his many gifts, was utterly wanting in that of the small talk of society — the talk of the drawing room. Like most great men of action, he had only thought of the serious things of life; all else appeared to him unworthy of attention. One of the results was tln.t Napoleon was not only ill at ease himself in a drawing room, but made everybody else iil at ease, too There ib a story of his once saying "How hot the weathei is" 15 times in the course

of an hour ; it was his desperate attempt at saying something when he felt nervous and was surrounded by bevies of prettywomen. I know few descriptions more ghastly in literature than that which Taihe gives of an "At Home" at the Court of Napoleon :

"Napoleon preserves nothing of the etiquette he borrows from the old Court bub its rigid discipline and its pompous parade,. ' The ceremonial system,' says an eyewitness, ' was carried out as if it had beerd regulated by the tap of a drum ; everything was done, in a certain sense, "double* quick." The air of precipitation, this constant anxiety which it inspires,' puts an end to all comfort, all ease, all entertainment^ all agreeable intercourse ; there is no common bond but that of command and obedi-

cuue. . . . jj.cuv.~v, a luii'.e, liiguj; Court . . . more dismal than dignified ; every countenance wears an expression

of uneasiness ... a silence both dull and constrained.' At Fontaineblean, 'amidst splendour and pleasures,' there is no real enjoyment nor anything agreeable, not even for himself. ' I pity you,' said M. de Talleyrand to M. de Remusat— « 'you have to amuse the unamusable.' A<i the theatre he is abstracted or yawns. Applause is interdicted ; the Court, sitting out ' the file of eternal tragedies, is mortally bored . . . the young ladies . fall asleep, people leave the theatre, gloomy and discontented. 1 There is the same constraint in the drawing ioom. 'He did. net know how to appear at ease, and I believe that be never wanted anybody else to do so, afraid of the slightest approach to familiarity, and inspiring each with a fear of saying something offensive to his neighbour before witnesses.' "Never did he utter to a woman a graceful or even a well-turned compliment, although the effort to find one was often apparent on his face and in the tone of his voice.

"He talks to them only of their toilet, of which he declares himself a severe and) minute judcie, and on which he indulges in not very delicate jests ; or again, r on the number of their children, demanding of them, in rude language, whether they nurse them themselves ; or again, lecturing them on their social relations. Hence, ' there is not one who does not rejoice when he movps oft."

Place almost any woman in such surroundings, and it will be seen that even if she were a woman of social genius jjhe would find her ta^k difficult, if not impossible. Josephine did manage to feel at ease even in an environment so terriblt; but then Josephine belonged to that old France where the chief occupation and the great talent of the aristocracy was to be agreeable in society, and she was a woman of such marvellous grace that Napoleon used to say of her that she wenb to sleep with grace. And Josephine had a good memory ; had been brought up almost from childhdod in rhe midst of the' people among whom she moved. If they belonged to the old regime she knew them! all through' her illustrious husband, first; the darling general and then J;he victim of the Revolution; if they belonged to the new regime she had seen them all advance step by step over the battlefields of Europe to their honours and dignities under her husband.

Poor Marie Louise was entirely destitute of any of thesd talents and advantages. She was one of those women so fearfully shy that she radiated — so to speak — shyness all around her ; and made others as uncomfortable as h<?rpelf. She had no memory for names and for faces; and all these beings around her were strangers to her ; even the Marshal who had gained a baton in a great victory was to her but a nam° The result war that she never went into society, never held any reception, without committing some frightful error or gaucherij.

xra. On one occasion there is a pause before the great officeis come to greet the Empres* ; she says nothing, and nobody around ber asks anything. As a last desperate expedient to break the cleadly stillness, the Empress begins to move one of her ears ; it is an_ accomplishment' which she had practised from childhood, and it is sufficiently rare to make her think it north exhibiting. But one can hear the strange and wild laughter with which those mocking Parisians reppated the shocking incident for many d.ivs afterwards. Whenever she has to receive she muddles up the names and the. professions : makes to the soldier the speech that would have been appropriate to the Senator ; mistakes the regicide for the Legitimist, and the Legitimist for the regicide People, above all, complain of her utter imuassivity of face when she appears in publij. Napoleon, by way of making the most of her and recommending her to her subject.- — whose loyalty he feels slipp.ng f rom under him — takes her on all soi ts <> r tours to the different parts of his wide dominions. Ports are opened; (.hip* are launched; there arc addresses and balls; children present bouquets; ladies pay compliments; the multitude salute her in honour of her husband with deafening < heers. She passes through all these •■heering mnltiiudes, through all these scenes of homage, with the '-ame cold fare : not once does she smile: not once does she manage to say a ready or an ;ipt '-hing. Her mind is slow; her timidity excessive. When a, situalHjn demanding promptitude and wit arises it has only the effect of making her nervous. She constantly breaks her fan