Les démêlés d’Hortense et de Louis et mort du Prince Royal.
This is part of a series where we’re translating Hortense Bonaparte’s letters to her brother Eugene. In today’s excerpt, Hortense describes how her husband’s jealousy is being manipulated in order to fill her life with infiltrators and spies.
The following is from the book, “Les Beauharnais et l’Empereur”.
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We come to one of the most painful periods in the life of Queen Hortense, She has returned to The Hague and she is the target of the real persecution, more than ever, that Louis exercises against her, The latter's sickly jealousy is more than ever on the alert.
This torment brings Hortense, so gentle, so sociable, so eager to please, always and everywhere feeling the need to be loved, to focus on herself, to adopt towards the Dutch this cold and distant attitude which has been criticized so much.
By the saddened confidences she gives to her brother, we will see that the responsibility for this attitude does not lie with her. But an even greater misfortune awaited her.
She idolized her son. the eldest, this little Napoleon-Charles, on whom the Emperor had views for his succession, a brilliant and charming child whose affectionate gaiety consoled his mother for her marital troubles.
Croup, an illness which then hardly spared its victims, kidnapped the little prince in a few days. Before this unforeseen and terrible blow, Hortense almost loses her mind. Her pain, dark and fierce, was immense and inconsolable.
To bring her a healthy diversion, she was sent to the Pyrenees.
She stayed there for many months, she saw her husband again, who, always unstable in his wishes, wandered from town to town to town.
The King had been deeply affected by the common loss. Mutual suffering brings together, for a few days, these two beings who were not made to get along.
This lull will bring about the birth of Napoleon III. Husband and wife set off again for Saint-Cloud where Napoleon receives his daughter-in-law and sister-in-law with harsh words, because he finds that the Queen has cried too much.
Louis returns to Holland and Hortense, free for a moment from his tyranny, stays with her mother in Saint-Cloud, Fontainebleau and Paris.
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Dear Eugene,
[The Hague], this 29 [March 1807].
I hope your wife has recovered a bit, my dear Eugene.
Always tell her about me; I will write to her soon. In my last letters, I may have caused you pain, but I couldn't resist talking to you about what is really sad. Now that nothing can hold him back, we have (1) everything arranged so that we are really in a real prison; sometimes I cannot really
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(1) It is Louis who, unlike in Paris, is no longer held back by the fear of the Emperor's remonstrances. On the persecutions endured by Hortense, see her Memoirs, loc. cit., I, 272. She repeats most of the complaints set out in this letter, "
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prevent myself from laughing at all the pain that we endure for nothing. Absolutely nothing is hidden now, because we became accustomed to the most ridiculous things; he’s happy that everyone can judge me, but, in a country which does not know me, it always gives an impression about me that one can see the way in which one behaves; I have no pleasant interactions with the outside world, I can’t pet a cat, no matter, we always take all possible precautions as if it should not be otherwise. No one can enter or leave after six in the evening.
Everyone becomes a spy and if you cough or blow your nose, it is repeated; On the bad subject of Sénégra Dalichoux (1), whom you must remember, he is the most vile man; so everyone hates him.
He is however Grand Master: he presided over one of the most beautiful places in the house. Finally, I forgive everything because it’s so sick and it's really crazy.
But I admit that, without my children, I would not remain in all this fiddling which is so below me and I would always find a protecter near my dear Eugène; but you have to think about a world that always blames a poor woman, since one has to suffer, at least that one does it with an entourage and with resignation.
I’m not writing with an open heart because it is M. Marescalchi (2) who will take my letter to Paris, forgive everything, because we are
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(1) Gabriel Dalichoux de Sénégra was a merchant from Toulouse, whom Louis had known in Valencia and had taken in friendship. He had become his “damned soul” (?) and had removed his steward before he left to become the Grand Master of his house. Hortense hated him and he returned it well.
(2) See above, p. 202.
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quite sure that letters are read, (1); but your letters which I receive through Lavallette are seen only by me, because they send me the package as soon as it arrives; so you can write to me whatever you want.
I don't know if I told you that Adèle was going to marry M. de Broc, they are in Paris for it (2).
We get here glimpses from the outer world; I really don't know what’s going on, and when we go to Paris, we will finally get a good idea of these poor Dutch people (3).
Farewell, my dear Eugène, here is a lot of running on.
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1. Here are in what terms the Queen tells of an incident in her Memoirs, I, 276: “A valet de chambre, who had followed a French émigré, was chosen to serve me. He always slept in my antechamber, wrote how many times my ladies entered my room. I often saw him, under the pretext of carrying wood which no one asked for, then he would lift the curtains to see if someone was not behind them. I seemed to notice nothing. I knew where the orders came from, even though I had been too humiliated to admit to myself of being spied on by a valet. Mme. de Boubers found the same man hiding near my children; she feared for them and believed it her duty to take it to my husband who had him sent away.
(2) Adèle Auguié married the general of Broc in Paris on April 11, 1807. - Armand-Louis de Broc, born in Vernoil-le-Fourier (Maine-et-Loire) on February 15, 1772, he had been colonel, Louis' aide de camp before being appointed, July 7, 1806, grand marshal of his palace. He was appointed general of brigade on March 3, 1809 and died in Milan (Italy) on March 11, 1810.
(3) In her Memoirs, the Queen says: the designatied members of my house "were so marked and so visibly inspired by jealousy that they always shocked me" (Memoirs of Queen Hortense, loc, cit., I, 274)
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but if I saw you I would surprise you by giving you details on what I am put through. I look forward to being able to find a greater consolation in the happiness of seeing you and knowing my lovely sister. I kiss my little niece.
HORTENSE.
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Cette partie est d'une série où nous traduisons les lettres d'Hortense Bonaparte à son frère Eugène. Dans l'extrait d'aujourd'hui, Hortense décrit comment la jalousie de son mari est manipulée afin de remplir sa vie d'infiltrés et d'espions.
Ce qui suit est tiré du livre «Les Beauharnais et l’Empereur».
