This is a series where we’re translating the memoirs of Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte’s reader Madame Cochelet. When we last left off both of these ladies were dealing with a terrible explosion.
Madame Cochelet writes:
(I did not know then that I would later marry a brave member of the Imperial Guard, who would have blushed to see me so cowardly.) However I reflected that it was my duty to follow the Queen, and I made up my mind.
The heart beat strongly, I dare admit it, especially since we were brought into an immense cave, preceded by torches, and that we walked an infinite time without seeing the day, because the cave was nine hundred feet in length.
Finally we stopped: I heard an appalling detonation; shards and stones came at us.
The torches were extinguished, and we saw the day and the valley unfolding before us. Never was a spectacle more beautiful and more imposing.
We continued along our road to Saint-Leu where the Queen found her mother who was bringing her children back to her.
Marie-Louise was on a trip to Cherbourg; the Queen only stopped for a few days and went to Dieppe.
We lived there in a small castle which was quite far from Dieppe, but very close to the sea.
Mr. Stanislas de Girardin, prefect of Rouen, had had prepared on the seaside a small charming hut, where there was a lounge and a bedroom, all decorated to delight.
This is where the Queen undressed and put on her bathing suit, which was nothing short of elegant: it consisted of a large chocolate-colored wool blouse with a fastening at the collar, and a headband in waxed taffeta which contained her long blond hair.
Thus wrapped up, one would have taken her for a patient of the hospital which one was going to throw into the water, rather than to recognize in it this elegant Queen, usually wrapped in batiste, lace, or covered with precious fabrics, diamonds and flowers.
A guard prevented the crowd from approaching the tent, because the whole city was on the shore and filled an amphitheater to watch as a marvel, this royal bath.
Opera glasses turned on all sides, whenever two sailors, dressed in wool and wearing white gloves, carried the Queen over the waves and made her take the plunge.
Universal cries then burst out among the spectators, and the poor woman was brought back in triumph, more dead than alive, into the drawing-room of the tent, where it took enough time to recover from such a lively shock.
I believe that if she had continued the use of these baths taken in this way, they would have killed her: it was thus, they said, that the English had arranged their sea baths at home, and it was claimed that it was the only way to take them so that they would be effective.
After three baths, to the great disappointment of all the idlers and the many curious of the city, for whom this bath in the open sea was a real spectacle, the doctor stopped them and the Queen only took them from then on in a bathtub with heated seawater.
I remember when I received the authorities of the city of Dieppe, one of the chiefs to whom the Queen asked if he had children, replied: "Yes, Majesty, I have a dozen."
Ah! you are very happy, said the Queen; one cannot have too many objects of such tender affection.”
Il s’agit d’une série où nous traduisons les mémoires de la lectrice de Madame Cochelet sur Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte.
La dernière fois que nous nous sommes arrêtés, ces deux femmes étaient aux prises avec une terrible explosion.
