The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise | Page 5

a woman of twenty-two be strong enough to withstand
the tempest? Would she be brave enough, could she indeed remain in
Paris without disobeying Napoleon? Was not flight a duty for the
hapless sovereign? The Emperor had written to his brother, King
Joseph: "In no case must you let the Empress and the King of Rome fall
into the enemy's hands. Do not abandon my son, and remember that I
had rather see him in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies of
France. The lot of Astyanax, a prisoner among the Greeks, has always
seemed to me the unhappiest in history." But, alas! in spite of the great
Emperor's precautions, the King of Rome was condemned by fate to be
the modern Astyanax, and Marie Louise was not as constant as
Andromache.
The allied forces drew near, and there was no more time for flight.
March 29, 1814, horses and carriages had been stationed in the

Carrousel since the morning. At seven o'clock Marie Louise was
dressed and ready to leave, but they could not abandon hope; they
wished still to await some possible bit of good news which should
prevent their leaving,--an envoy from Napoleon, a messenger from
King Joseph. The officers of the National Guard were anxious to have
the Empress stay. "Remain," they urged; "we swear to defend you."
Marie Louise thanked them through her tears, but the Emperor's orders
were positive; on no account were the Empress and the King of Rome
to fall into the enemy's hands. The peril grew. Ever since four o'clock
Marie Louise had kept putting off the moment of leaving, in
expectation that something would turn up. Eleven struck, and the
Minister of War came, declaring there was not a moment to lose. One
would have thought that the little King of Rome, who was just three
years old, knew that he was about to go, never to return. "Don't go to
Rambouillet," he cried to his mother; "that's a gloomy castle; let us stay
here." And he clung to the banisters, struggling with the equerry who
was carrying him, weeping and shouting, "I don't want to leave my
house; I don't want to go away; since papa is away, I am the master."
Marie Louise was impressed by this childish opposition; a secret voice
told her that her son was right; that by abandoning the capital, they
surrendered it to the Royalists. But the lot was cast, and they had to
leave. A mere handful of indifferent spectators, attracted by no other
feeling than curiosity, watched the flight of the sovereign who, four
years before, had made her formal entrance into this same palace of the
Tuileries under a triumphal arch, amid noisy acclamations. There was
not a tear in the eyes of the few spectators; they uttered no sound, they
made no movement of sympathy or regret; there was only a sullen
silence. But one person wept, and that was Marie Louise. When she had
reached the Champs Elyseés, she cast a last sad glance at the palace she
was never to see again. It was not a flight, but a funeral.
The Empress and the King of Rome took refuge at Blois, where there
appeared a faint shadow of Imperial government. On Good Friday,
April 8, Count Shouvaloff reached Blois with a detachment of
Cossacks, and carried Marie Louise and her son to Rambouillet, where
the Emperor of Austria was to join them. What Napoleon had feared
was soon realized.
April 16, the Emperor of Austria was at Blois. Marie Louise, who two

years before had left her father, starting on her triumphal journey to
Prague, amid all form of splendor and devotion, was much moved at
seeing him again, and placed the King of Rome in his arms, as if to
reproach him for deserting the child's cause. The grandfather relented,
but the monarch was stern: did he not soon say to Marie Louise: "As
my daughter, everything that I have is yours, even my blood and my
life; as a sovereign, I do not know you"? The Russian sentinels at the
entrance of the castle of Rambouillet were relieved by Austrian
grenadiers. The Empress of the French changed captors; she was the
prisoner no longer of the Czar's soldiers, but of her own father. Her
conjugal affection was not yet wholly extinct, and she reproached
herself with not having joined Napoleon at Fontainebleau; but her
scruples were soon allayed by the promise that she should soon see her
husband again at Elba. She was told that the treaty which had just been
signed gave her, and after her, her son, the duchies of Parma, Piacenza,
and Guastalla; that the King of Rome was henceforth the hereditary
Duke of Parma; that if she had duties as