by Emil Ludwig
Lucien smiles at the unreasonableness of the demand. Napoleon is embarrassed, but returns to the charge. Suddenly he addresses his brother as " my dear President " (Lucien having long ago been president of the Council of Five Hundred), and
Any Crown You Like
adds with emphasis : " Service for service, of course—and this time you will not find me ungrateful ! "
Lucien sank " into a sort of reverie, which was by no means unpleasant," so that for a few moments he hardly noticed what Napoleon was talking about. Before long he realised that the Emperor was saying, confidentially, that his only reason for wanting Lucien's divorce was that this would probably minimise the effect of his own on public opinion. Lucien, as tactfully as he could, alluded to his own advantages, pointing out that his wife was a young woman and was not barren. Napoleon took no offence. " Your wife, oh, yes, your wife, didn't I tell you ? She will become the duchess of Parma, your eldest boy will be her heir, without having any claim of succession to your rights as a French prince. For this is only the first stage to which I shall raise you, until something better can be found : an independent crown."
At the word " independent," Lucien cannot restrain a smile, for he is thinking of the part his brothers have to play. Napoleon notices the expression on his face.
" Yes, independent. You will know how to reign. . . . You need only take your choice ! " His eyes flash fire, and he bangs the enormous map with the flat of his hand. " I'm not talking at random. All this belongs to me or soon will. Even to-day, I can do what I please. Would you like to have Naples ? I will take it away from Joseph. . . . Italy, the loveliest jewel in my imperial crown ? Eugene is no more than viceroy. He hopes to become king, expects to outlive me, but he will be disappointed in this matter. I shall live to be ninety, for I cannot do with less than that for the complete consolidation of my empire. Besides, Eugene will not suit me in Italy, after I have divorced his mother. Would you care for Spain ? Do you not see that it is ripe to fall into my hands, thanks to the blunders of the Bourbons you are so fond of ? Would you not like to be king in the country to which you went as envoy ? What would you prefer to have ? It is for you to say. Anything and everything is
The Dynastic Snare
at your disposal, if only you will divorce your wife before I divorce mine ! "
Lucien is spell-bound for a time by the feverish haste with which Napoleon speaks. At last he says : " Not even your lovely France, Sire, would bribe me to this divorce ; and besides . . ." He hesitates ; but the Emperor guesses his thoughts, and says dryly, with an imperious air such as Lucien has never before seen him assume :
" Do you think that you, as a private individual, are in a more secure position than I upon the throne ? . . . Do you believe that your friend the pope is strong enough to protect you against me if I should seriously propose to take measures against you ? " After reiterating arguments and enticements, he says in a formal tone : " You may be quite sure of this : everything for the divorced Lucien ; nothing for the undivorced ! "
Lucien glances at the door, as a hint to the Emperor that he would be glad to be given his dismissal; but Napoleon takes him by the hand, and says " in a vague tone, and with a demeanour which might mean anything " :
" If I get a divorce, you will not be the only other one. Joseph is merely waiting for my divorce to arrange for his own. Madame Julie has been good for nothing but to bring girls into the world, whereas I urgently need boys. The only use of girls is to marry them off in advantageous alliances. Besides, your eldest girl is nearly fourteen, so you tell me ; just the right age. Won't you send her to Mamma ? If you do what I want, I will get Mamma to arrange something good for her. . . . You are not afraid that we shall do any harm to your spoiled darling ? Tell her we shall be good friends, and that I will not pull her ears as if she were a child. ... I need more nephews and nieces ! The divorced Josephine, the grandmother of Hortense's children, will always be the enemy of my legitimate and my adopted sons." Then, murmuring as if to himself, " It must be done. I have no other way of undermining the power of Louis' and Hortense's children."
Climax of the Scene
He comes back to the subject of his own illegitimate children, says he intends to adopt them, enters into details, and suddenly exclaims : " You cannot suppose that I have not the power to legitimise my natural children, just as Louis XIV. declared his bastards, the fruit of a twofold adultery, to be within the right of succession to the throne." Again he speaks of Joseph's intention to procure a divorce, and, when Lucien is sceptical, he rubs his hands delightedly, saying :
"Yes, yes ! Joseph and you will both divorce your wives ! We will all three get divorces, and then marry again, all of us, on the very same day ! " He adds a number of quips in the like merry vein. Then, suddenly : " But why have you become so serious ? One might think you a sage of classical antiquity ! You must stay with me for three days. I'll have a bed made ready for you in the next room to mine ! "
He presses this invitation. Lucien, who dreads his brother's blandishments, has to invent an excuse, and says that one of his children is ill.
His wife, he goes on to say, has suffered because of the Emperor's dislike ; so much so, that he had been afraid at one time her anxiety and distress about the matter would be too much for her.
" Is that really so ? I'm sorry. You must take care of her ! Whatever happens, she must not die before you get your divorce, for if she did I should not be able to legitimise her children ! "
Lucien pretends that he will think the matter over.
" That's all right. Well, well, go if you must! But be sure to keep your word ! " Napoleon takes Lucien by the hand, and at the same time presents his cheek for a kiss, which is not as brotherly as it might be. Lucien departs, and when he is in the anteroom he hears the Emperor calling: " Meneval! "
Lucien quickens his steps, for again the dread of imprisonment has seized him.
No one, no historian and no imaginative writer, has ever
The Inner Man
given a more brilliant description of Napoleon than the foregoing, penned by his brother with obvious fidelity. This evening, the Emperor is in a quandary. He wants the help of a man whom he cannot coerce, and one who in certain respects is his equal. In the light thrown by Lucien, Napoleon's character becomes positively transparent. He develops himself under our very eyes, showing us all the interplay of his motives.
He lavishes temptations in the endeavour to overpersuade his adversary. Every move is carefully thought out, that it may exercise its appropriate influence upon the ambition of his interlocutor, whom he tries to win by the studied gradations of the dialogue. The visitor finds him brooding oyer the map of Europe, and is greeted in a way which is to alarm and to inspire confidence by turns. The wife, the bone of contention, is first vilified and then extolled. Napoleon goes back to the phraseology of the Jacobin Club, calls his brother " citizen," pulls out one emotional stop after another. He reminds Lucien that they are both Corsicans ; says with a challenging irony that Europe is too small for the pair of them ; talks of Mamma and Pauline, of Joseph and Louis, using names that carry with them reminiscences of the nursery in which the Bonaparte children had played together. Thus he spins his web round Lucien.
And yet—this is the marvel—we are shown the bubbling up of his nature, the beating of his heart, the quivering of his brain. Again and ever again, imagination and passion seem to carry him beyond the limits of self-restraint. Though his brother is a declared opponent, he makes all kinds of confessions : about Josephine and the countess ; about his stepchildren and his generals ; about his own blunders and his new, far-reaching plans. There is a flood of confidential admissions. Why?
Because this Lucien, though an adversary, though no less gifted than Talleyrand, is a brother, and therefore, to the clannish Napoleon, is, in spite of everything, worthy of confidence. It moves us to see the way in which Napoleon detains him in
Brotherly Hate
private talk for hours till mi
dnight is long past; how he presses Lucien to stay for a few days, that they may thrash matters out; and how Lucien insists on going, not because he really needs to, but because he does not wish to bow before the force of his brother's genius. For there is a secret contest between the pair, not about love or divorce, not about honour or crowns. To-day, just as seven years before, when the younger man could not bring himself to obey the elder, the contest is between the innermost self-esteem of one rival and of the other. After all these years, in the privacy of his own thoughts Lucien is still convinced that he could have managed everything much better than Napoleon.
And yet, all the time, he loves him after his own fashion. Every word of his report betrays the obscure enmity between the brothers, the enmity that lives side by side with love. That is why he concedes nothing. The memory of the Nineteenth Brumaire has to be revived, and once more each of them is confident he was right. While these expert realists are talking, with the old phrases on their lips, the old verbiage about the greatness and the safety of France, they are really moved by nothing but their own passions. We seem to see them posturing before the crowd (a doubt seizes them—" We are alone here. You see. We are alone. No one can overhear us "); but in truth they are alone, in a strange and foreign castle, beneath huge candelabra, on which the candles are burning low.
Nevertheless, despite Napoleon's wealth and all his crowns, despite his stupendous powers of intellect and imagination, how poor a man he is, entangled in the threads of destiny, the threads which he has spun, but which are now spinning themselves in defiance of his wishes ! For all his omnipotence, he is the slave of an incalculable, much-courted power, public opinion, which will not allow him to effect a reconciliation with his brother, to recognise his own children, or to marry the woman he loves. The impotence of the man of might is displayed in his own exclamations. He asseverates his power to do anything and
The Carpet
everything—and yet he dare not do what he wants. How pleased he is with his brother, whose affairs he could manage so beautifully now that they have met after many years of separation. If Lucien would only stay with him, were it but for three days, they would certainly be able to come to an understanding. " Good God, you press me hard, and I am weak."
During this night when an emperor was offering his brother a choice among the thrones of Europe, was there not talk of the heritage of Carlo Bonaparte, a poor nobleman, on a small, out-of-the-way island ? Did the Emperor of the French, who will never hear a word of his being a foreigner in France, conjure up the shade of the Corsican ; was it he who evoked the penates of his birthplace for the protection of Brother Lucien, a negotiator in a hostile camp ? Surely what we are recounting is a saga, told at midnight beside the fireplace in Mantua ? Yes, it is the saga which the little Corsican lieutenant has woven out of the threads of his life : first a narrow band ; but as he trails it after him, twists it and loops it, mixes colours and patterns, by degrees a carpet is formed; greater and more varied become the pictures produced out of the one thread, pictures of lands and thrones, of seas and men.
The whole has been woven in the most natural way in the world. Not by a miracle, but only through the working of his talents, has the man become master of men. To-night he wants to add yet another to the long list of his subjects. He has not enough time, even though he hopes to live till he is ninety. He cannot allow his brothers to have girl children, or to live with the women of their choice. But if these undesired nieces throng his stage, he must set up new nephews against them. If a wife is in danger of dying of grief, she must at least be good enough to wait until she is divorced. When the men of the family have at length forsaken the wives who are barren or can only bear daughters, then, on the same day, they will take new wives unto themselves—and all will go happily ever after. Look at him, when the conversation is drawing to a close, rubbing his hands
The Spanish Dynasty
in his satisfaction, the little magician who stands in front of his immense map. By the time he has impaled all the countries with his coloured pins, impaled them like butterflies to put away in his collection—well, by that time the candles have burned out and a large slice of to-morrow has already been devoured.
XIX
The Spanish dynasty seemed about to fall. Immediately after the conversation recorded above, war was declared. Had not the Emperor already predicted it ? A king who had degenerated into being his wife's souteneur; a queen who only lacked courage to be a Messalina ; a faithless minister; hatred between father and son; rascality, bribery, and corruption—to such a pass had sunk the house of Bourbon! He who wished to dethrone those who represented it, must use the ,same means as were used by the Spanish royal house itself. Never before had Napoleon's actions been more fiercely unscrupulous ; never before had the degeneracy of his opponent been a more useful weapon to his hand. He had always adapted his methods to his adversary; and, in the case of this decayed dynasty, he had recourse to the wiles and trickery similar to those which the Spanish house availed itself of in a last effort to preserve its integrity. Absorbed in his schemes, he forgot the Spanish people, which was in no way responsible for such princes, and which in no way resembled the royal rulers : in days to come the Emperor was bitterly to rue his forgetfulness.
He who is for England, is against me! In support of this principle, Napoleon had already chased the Portuguese royal family from the throne. Now, since Spain, too, is on the side of England, in a prolonged intrigue he turns to his own advantage the struggle between the king and the crown prince ; brings the latter to the front; then orders him to withdraw in favour of the father; and, finally, at a meeting of all parties in Bayonne, is able, by threats and cunning, to ensure that the Spanish crown
Aztecs andlncas
shall be his own. The Mediterranean must belong to him ; the coasts at any rate, from Gibraltar to Cattaro. This is an essential part of the war on England.
At first his generals have an easy task in their work of conquest. " Do you know why I am invading Spain ? " says Napoleon to Metternich. " I must feel safe at my back." Alas for him when he is no longer safe in that quarter !
On the critical day when he has settled matters with the Spanish princes, and has arranged that they shall be kept in a mild imprisonment, he is in a condition of moderate intoxication. The new crown gives him fresh impetus. He no longer sees Spain; his eyes are turned to contemplate the worldwide empire of Spain in the days of her vanished glory. On this occasion, a witness tells us, " the Emperor spoke, or rather dictated, at great length, in the Ossianic vein, . . . like one whose heart was uplifted. ... In his picturesque, metaphorical style, he referred to the powerful kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, describing the might of their rule and their influence. Never have I heard him display such a wealth of imagery as on this day. He was sublime."
The one thing he lacks is an occupant for the vacant throne, since Lucien has not accepted the bribe. The only way out of the difficulty will be a general post, like that which occurs when a vacancy is filled in the upper ranks of the officialdom and every one is promoted a step. Let us do away with the kingdom of Holland, make it only a province, and discrown Louis. The victim protests: "It does not suit me to be governor of a province. A king must rule by divine right. . . . How could I demand loyalty from my people if I myself were false to the oath I swore when I ascended the throne ? " Napoleon is troubled once more by the consequences of having founded a dynasty. This modern Roman should have put his provinces in charge of generals and regents, whom he could recall whenever he pleased. But the ermine in which he dresses his puppets, all the apparatus of coronation and Mass and anoint ing, awaken
Back to Europe
ideas which were being laid to rest, and fully justify little King Louis in his refusal. Joseph is more accommodating. Till yesterday, he was king in Naples : why should he not be king in Madrid to-morrow ? Shortly after the Bayonne intrigue, King Joseph I. enters his new capital, acclaimed, not indeed by the hearts of the people, but by the prop
er number of salute guns and all the ceremonial suitable to the occasion. Murat, whose wife has long been pestering her brother for a crown, Murat the son of the proletariat, becomes king of Naples, and thus the imposing couple gain a statelier field for their intrigues, and in due time for their treason.
But this Spanish affair is a great adventure, and has serious consequences. There is muttering " at the Emperor's back," for the Spaniards are proud, and will not endure the conquest without a struggle. In front, across the Rhine, all the Prussians and all the Austrians who hate the Emperor have now reason to dread that Prussia and Austria may share the fate of Spain, and have good grounds for yet another renewal of their offensive. In Berlin, Napoleon had declared that on the Elbe he had conquered the Ganges. Now he fails to see that in his dealings on the Tagus he is raising up new enemies on the Danube. But he knows that he cannot do as he pleases in Spain unless the tsar holds Austria in check for him. The tsar is a man of unstable character. The only way to win over Alexander is by suggestion, as two years before, in Tilsit, and for this a personal interview will be necessary. The Emperor thereupon proposes to meet the tsar in central Germany, half way between their respective empires, thus initiating a form of policy new to him, a conference. Always before, when he has left France, it has been sword in hand, and he has invariably paved the way for negotiations by fighting. Now, to avoid a fight, a conference table is established in Erfurt.
Napoleon prepares for this new sort of campaign with as much care as if he had been preparing for a military expedition.
An Audience of Kings
Day after day he summons court officials and other dignitaries. " My journey must be extremely imposing. I want great names for the headquarters, . . . and I wish to amaze Germany by the splendour of the occasion." For others are coming besides the tsar. The great double stars are attracting all the lesser stars. How can he best influence this assembly ? The play's the thing wherein he'll catch the conscience of the kings ! He stage-manages his theatre elaborately, devotes much thought to the cast, amends passages, and gives Talma (for whom he feels something akin to friendship) hints as to what requires to be emphasised—all with an eye to the royal audience. " You are going to play your parts in a theatre where the stalls will be filled with kings."
