Let’s have another look at Hortense’s Memoirs. If you want to read the book it is available for free at the side bar in English and French. Use the widget on the sidebar to translate the text below into pretty much any language.
Hortense describes her suffering at having to face the tomb of her son during a celebration about Napoleon’s son. She also describes the hyper ambitious Murats.
Hortense’s memoirs continues:
I did not feel I had the courage to do this. "I shall not be able to control my emotion," I told Adele. "Should I not avoid making a scene in public?"
She reminded me of the Emperor's annoyance, pointing out that he would be angry with me without having understood my motives. Finally, I decided to go at once to Notre Dame so that by visiting it alone, I might get over the shock of the first vivid impressions and have more strength to endure my feelings on the morrow.
Adele opposed my wishes. She feared the experience might be more than my feeble health could bear. "At least I shall be there alone with you," I exclaimed.
“No one will intrude on my sad thoughts, and tomorrow I shall be able to banish them from my mind."
It was then midnight. In a plain carriage without liveried attendants I arrived alone with Adele in front of the portals of Notre Dame. The church was shut. I went to the archbishop's palace nearby, where after a little argument the gatekeeper consented to admit us to the vast edifice, so imposing on account of its memories, yet visualizing to a mother who sees it rise above the coffin of her son only a symbol of her grief.
Everything was ready for the baptismal ceremonies. Some workmen far in the back of the church were still completing their task. The dim light of their feeble lanterns, the sound of their hammers occasionally breaking the silence, so like that of the tomb especially to one whose mind was haunted by thoughts of death—all this combined to fill my heart with feelings of terror and sadness.
Everything that had been cruel and bitter in the past rose before me. It overwhelmed me. Unable to bear up under the weight of my sorrow I fell on my knees in front of the altar and poured forth torrents of tears. The old doorkeeper, lantern in hand, looked at me with astonishment.
He helped Adele bear me away from this mournful scene. The next morning I reentered the church in state. The clergy had come to the main entrance to meet us. Standing up next to the Empress, to whom an address was being made, I remembered how a few years before they had come on the same spot to meet the body of my poor child.
My courage nearly failed me, but my previous day's visit had strengthened it, and no one noticed the strain I was under.
The celebrations in honor of the christening were magnificent. I attended those held at the Hotel de Ville and at Saint Cloud. Finally, unable to stand all these ceremonies any longer, I left to take the waters at Aix-en-Savoie.
The Emperor during my absence gave my children permission to live at the Pavillon d'Italie. Since the birth of the King of Rome they had continued to attend their uncle's luncheon as they had done previously. He always received them pleasantly, making them sit beside him, although there was hardly any room for them, as his lunch was served rapidly on a small, round, one legged table.
This was the hour when he saw people who were not received at court, distinguished artists, his architects with whom he discussed the beautifying of Paris, and occasionally Talma (the actor), a fact which gave rise to the ridiculous report that the Emperor took lessons in diction from him.
The Empress Josephine was very anxious to see the King of Rome. Madame de Montesquiou took him one day to Bagatelle where she also went. She fondled him a great deal and could not refrain from weeping as she kissed him and exclaimed, "Ah, dear child, someday perhaps you will know how much you cost me."
The Emperor paid my mother a visit which pained the Empress Marie Louise. He had however taken every precaution to avoid her hearing of it. Fearing to increase her uneasiness he did not return again. The waters at Aix did me good: My brother came to see me on his way back to Italy and urged me to take advantage of being so near to make the acquaintance of his young family, but I fell ill. My brother, anxious about my health, crossed the Simplon Pass, but I was obliged to return to France without having carried out that pleasant plan.
The Emperor in the meanwhile had made a trip through Holland with the Empress. While there they saw my apartments, heard details regarding my domestic life and came back sympathizing with me more than ever. I wished to find a governor for my children. Monsieur de Las Cases and Monsieur de Saint-Aulaire applied for the post.
I spoke to the Emperor about the matter. He said to me: "France will be sorry to see the education of your children placed in the hands of a noble. It is one of the heroes of my army who should bring up French princes."
The choice seemed to me so difficult that it was postponed. The Queen of Naples, to whom a little matter of nine hundred miles did not matter as a journey, arrived in Paris unexpectedly and before we even had heard of her departure from Naples.
Certain difficulties had arisen between the Emperor and her husband, who having been made King of Naples by the Emperor also wished to be independent. She arrived in the hope of reconciling them.
Murat had for a long time pretended to be deeply attached to the Emperor. He declared he could not leave him for more than twenty-four hours. He would have refused all the thrones in the world in order to be near his idol and had no other ambition, so he said, than to serve him.
Caroline was always saying, "The Emperor is like a god to my husband. I should be jealous of such devotion." And the Emperor himself, although he frequently said that a monarch should be feared during his lifetime and loved only after his death, had been deceived by these demonstrations of affection on the part of Murat, whom he believed utterly devoted to his interests.
Murat was a good man. He was dashingly brave, and possessed military talents together with a great desire to please and to be admired. He sought to have good manners and overdid them.
One saw by his exaggerated dress and his attentions to the ladies that he wished to resemble the Villarceaux and Sevignés of the days of Louis XIV. These famous courtiers were the models he had chosen, but the rough hearty republican could not be completely hidden, and the mixture of the two opposite types of character would have been ridiculous at times if one had not been conscious of the honest, frank soldier in the background who reconciled the puppets one to the other.
Consequently, in spite of his male and martial beauty he was a far less dangerous person than he imagined. He had an excellent heart, a mediocre mind, and the rise of his fortunes had been too rapid not to have slightly turned his head.
Ambition without those qualities which justify it is a despicable thing, and only really great men can make it into a virtue. The ambition of Murat was a result of his good fortune, and after being a distinguished general he became a second-rate monarch.
He made me smile one day while he was still only Grand Duc de Berg. He was complaining about the Emperor who wished to annex the city of Wesel to France. "The Emperor had no right to take that town away from me," he declared. "It was not he who gave it to me. I obtained it through a treaty with the King of Prussia." And who was it who had made that treaty? Who had given him his duchy, the town and everything else? Another time when the Emperor was reproaching him for extracting too much money from his duchy of Berg, Murat said with his slightly Gascon accent, "What do you mean, Sire? I spend my own on it."
The Queen of Naples had always taken her husband's part in his relations with the Emperor, but when she was alone with him her equal desire for power caused constant friction between them. "I am unhappier than you are," she said one day to me. "Louis cannot be more jealous or disagreeable than Murat. It is natural enough that I should wish to be the first person informed of what is going on in my kingdom. But what trouble it gives me! I am obliged to send out my valet secretly to meet the minister of foreign affairs or the chief of police by appointment down by the harbor. If there is any news it is sent me immediately, but the fear the King inspires is so great that the minister when I see him again is pale and trembling and eagerly asks whether I burned the paper that might endanger him. Tell me, can one submit to this sort of treatment?"
Far from arousing my compassion she only showed me the King was right in being suspicious of a Queen who bribed all the ministers in order to obtain secret information without his knowing it. I considered that our lives were as different as our characters.
No one could possess to the same degree as Caroline the art of making herself agreeable and pleasing by adopting an attitude that had in it both a certain Oriental dignity and the supple grace of the odalisque. To be sure, at times a little claw emerged beneath the velvety touch of her caress, but a most carefully calculated abandon and the most gracious manner promptly cured the wound and captivated you anew.
Proud, brave, persevering, passionate, careless and variable as were her moods, the same charms which attracted people to her could not mask her desire to secure all power for herself, nor her jealousy of the successes of others.
Such was the Queen of Naples. We had for a long time been friendly when a petty incident separated us. The Emperor decided there were to be two elaborate balls given at court, one in fancy dress, the other masked. The Princesses were to be asked to present formal pageants.
The original French is available below:
