Queen Hortense | Page 2

life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and meditate upon her destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all! Her ballads and poems remain, for genius needs no diadem to be immortal.
When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she none the less continued to be a poetess "by the grace of God." Her poems are sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds of womanly gentleness. Her musical compositions, too, are equally melodious and attractive to the heart. Who does not know the song, "_Va t'en, Guerrier_," which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at Napoleon's request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of France once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this march, to carry the French eagles to Russia; and to the same warlike harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the same distant destination. This ballad, written by Hortense, survived. At one time everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then, when the Bourbons had returned, the scarred and crippled veterans of the Invalides hummed it under their breath, while they whispered secretly to each other of the glory of La Belle France, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now gone forever.
To-day, that song rings out with power again through France, and mounts in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place Vend?me. The bronze visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so holy a significance--holy because it is the master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should revere--the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "_Va t'en, Guerrier_," which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place of some brave soldier.
She had much to contend with--this hapless and amiable queen--but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to woman--the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken heart; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged lion, on a lone rock in the sea! Her whole family--all the dethroned kings and queens--went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs, banished from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of those to whom they had been clement, a little spot of earth, where, far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might live in quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their mighty sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glittering fairy tale, which no one now believed; and only the present seemed, to men and nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed stings, were eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned Napoleon race.
Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia had the mental strength not to hate her fellow-beings, but, on the contrary, to teach her children to love them and do good to them. The heart of the dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but she did not allow these wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her heart to harden under the broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to bleed. She cherished her bereavements and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears; but, even while she suffered measureless woes, it solaced her heart to relieve the woes and dry the tears of others. Thus was her life a constant charity; and when she died she could, like the Empress Josephine, say of herself, "I have wept much, but never have I made others weep."
Hortense was the daughter of the Viscount de Beauharnais, who, against the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, a young Creole lady of Martinique. This alliance, which love alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not merely a lover and tender husband, but also a sober counsellor and cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life; and Josephine was too innocent, too