TEARS AND ERMINE

Taranaki Daily News, 9 October 1928, Page 10

TEARS AND ERMINE

A TRAGIC STORY. Ermine and diamonds symbolise the queen; but to the woman who wears them the ermine may be tear-stained, the diamonds lustreless. Such was the lot of Hortense de Beauharnaisj Queen of Holland, than whom no unhappier woman has lived. Frank, sincere, loyal, supremely lovable, with -great artistic talents, she deserved well of fortune; persecuted by her husband, deserted by her lover, bereft of her children, humiliated by arrest and banishment, she housed tragedy for mate from childhood days spent in the shadow of the guillotine to the last days eked out in lonely exile; such arc fortune’s vagaries. How much she suffered, she alone could tell; and in “The Memoirs of Queen Hortense,” edited by the late Prince Napoleon, she has bequeathed to posterity the tragic story of her life. Hortense was six years old at the outbreak of the revolution. Hurrying home from Martinique with her mother, the future Empress Josephine, she narrowly escaped death by shipwreck. Her father, the Vicomte Alexandre de Bcauharnais, had espoused the popular cause and held high command, but the taint of noble birth soon rendered him suspect, and with Josephine he was flung into prison, Hortense and her brother being left in the care of their governess. One day a woman came to fetch the children: —

The woman led us to the bottom of a garden in the Rue de Sevres. Telling us not to make a sound, she let us into the gardener’s cottage. Opposite there was a big building where a window opened and my father and mother appeared. Filled with surprise and delight, I uttered a cry and stretched out my arm toward my parents. They made me a sign not to speak, but a sentinel on duty at the foot of the wall had heard us and gave the alarm, whereon the unknown woman hurried us away. We learned later that the window of the prison had been pitilessly walled up. That was the last time I saw my father. A few days later he was no more.

The guillotine had claimed him, Josephine being saved from a similar fate by the timely fall of Robespierre. Napoleon, now Hortense’s step-father, decided to wed her to his brother, Louis. Louis had fallen in love with another Mademoiselle Beauharnais, a “poor relative,” so Napoleon promptly removed this obstacle by marrying the poor relative to Lavalette. Louis, still proving obdurate, was sent on active service, and Hortense secretly rejoiced. Then fate stepped- in. One winter’s night a bomb was exploded between the carriage in which Hortense was accompanying Josephine to the theatre and the carriage in which Napoleon preceded them. It was a narrow escape with tragic consequences for Hortense, for it decided Napoleon to hasten his brother’s marriage. Louis was recalled and ordered to propose, Hortense commanded to accept; at a ball at Malmaison the wretched pair unwillingly obeyed, and the marriage took place in January, 1802. Trouble began before the honeymoon was over, and from that moment Hortense had only one feeling toward her husband—that of fear. On receiving the Crown of Holland, Louis became a veritable tyrant to his wife. Servants were employed to spy upon her, her letters were opened; she was forbidden to appoint her own ladies-in-waiting, or even to write to her mother without her husband’s consent:—

A prisoner in my palace, I no longer dared receive even the visits of my young ladies-in-wating or leave my apartment to go to one of them if she happened to be ill. A footman who had followed one of the emigres abroad was engaged to wait on me. He always slept in my ante-room, and wrote down how many times my young ladies came to see me. I often noticed that, when he brought wood for the fire, without anyone having asked for it, he would push aside the window curtains to see if there were not someone behind them.

Napoleon > intervened frequently on Hortense’s behalf, but in vain. He had made their eldest son his heir. At the Tuileries, he would make the child ‘“sit in the middle of the table and let him touch everything. He gave him wine and coffee; and though he frequently made the child cry by pinching his cheek or hugging him too hard, he had known how to win his affeetion and could not come into the room without my son stretching out his arms toward him.”

Not even the tragedy of this child’s death or the joy of a third son’s birth could reconejje husband and wife, and in 1810 Hortense left Louis and returned to Paris. There at a ball a young man annoyed her by applauding her dancing too loudly. Next day the young man, accompanied by his mother, called to apologise. From then on Hortense was tortured by the fear that she was falling in love:— When people talked to me I tried to turn the conversation on the feelings of those who are in love; I trembled at the thought that I might experience those feelings, and if love was described as a state of passion and frenzy I breathed more freely, saying to myself, “What a relief! Then I cannot be in love.”

But soon she realised the truth. Love had come to her—too late; but the Comte de Flahaut was soon ordered on active service—though not until a son had been born to them who was destined to achieve renown in the day of the Second Empire as the Due de Moray. The came Napoleon’s downfall. Hortense succeded in wringing from Louis XVIII. permission to remain in France with the title of Duchess of Saint Leu. But her tears for Josephine’s death were hardly dry when this comfortable existence was cut short, for she rallied to Napoleon’s side during the Hundred Days and thus for ever forfeited the favour of the Bourbons. Giving up her jewels to provide for Napoleon’s needs, she fled into exile. Agents of the Bourbons tracked her down; twice she was arrested; Government after Government refused her asylum. At last, after two years of wandering, she found refuge at Augsburg.

Her elder son was torn from her by his father; she herself was deserted even by her lover, who had married an Englishwoman. In despair she devoted her remaining days to the education of her younger boy, but it was not given her to witness his aseent as Napoleon 111. to the throne of his great-uncle.