The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise | Page 6

a wife, she also had duties as a
mother; that she ought to gain the good-will of the powers, and assure
her child's future. They added that she ought to give her husband time
to establish himself at Elba, and that meanwhile she would find in
Vienna, near her loving parents, a few weeks of moral and physical rest,
which must be very necessary after so many emotions and sufferings.
Marie Louise, who had been brought up to give her father strict
obedience, regarded the advice of the Emperor of Austria as commands
which were not to be questioned, and April 23 she left Rambouillet
with her son for Vienna.
Did the dethroned Empress carry away with her a pleasant memory of
France and the French people? We do not think so; and, to be frank,
was what had just happened likely to give her a favorable idea of the
country she was leaving? Could she have much love for the people who
were fastening a rope to pull down the statue of the hero of Austerlitz
from its pedestal, the Vendôme column? When her father, the Emperor
Francis I., had been defeated, driven from his capital, overwhelmed
with the blows of fate, his misfortunes had only augmented his
popularity; the more he suffered, the more he was loved. But for
Napoleon, who was so adored in the day of triumph, how was he
treated in adversity? What was the language of the Senate, lately so

obsequious and servile? The men on whom the Emperor had literally
showered favors, called him contemptuously Monsieur de Bonaparte.
What did they do to save the crown of the King of Rome, whose cradle
they had saluted with such noisy acclamations? Were not the Cossacks
who went to Blois after the Empress rapturously applauded by the
French, in Paris itself, upon the very boulevards? Did not the marshals
of the Empire now serve as an escort to Louis XVIII.? Where were the
eagles, the flags, and the tricolored cockades? When Napoleon was
passing through Provence on his way to take possession of his
ridiculous realm of Elba, he was compelled to wear an Austrian
officer's uniform to escape being put to death by Frenchmen; the
imperial mantle was exchanged for a disguise. It is true that Marie
Louise abandoned the French; but did not the French abandon her and
her son after the abdication of Fontainebleau; and if this child did not
become Napoleon II., is not the fault theirs? And did she not do all that
could be demanded of her as regent? Can she be accused of intriguing
with the Allies; and if at the last moment she left Paris, was it not in
obedience to her husband's express command? She might well have
said what fifty-six years later the second Emperor said so sadly when
he was a prisoner in Germany: "In France one must never be
unfortunate." What was then left for her to do in that volcano, that land
which swallows all greatness and glory, amid that fickle people who
change their opinions and passions as an actress changes her dress?
Where Napoleon, with all his genius, had made a complete failure,
could a young, ignorant woman be reasonably expected to succeed in
the face of all Europe? Were her hands strong enough to rebuild the
colossal edifice that lay in ruins upon the ground?
Such were the reflections of Marie Louise as she was leaving France.
The moment she touched German soil, all the ideas, impressions,
feelings of her girlhood, came back to her, and naturally enough; for
were there not many instances in the last war, of German women,
married to Frenchmen, who rejoiced in the German successes, and of
French women, married to Germans, who deplored them? Marriage is
but an incident; one's nature is determined at one's birth. In Austria,
Marie Louise found again the same sympathy and affection that she had
left there. There was a sort of conspiracy to make her forget France and
love Germany. The Emperor Francis persuaded her that he was her sole

protector, and controlled her with the twofold authority of a father and
a sovereign. She who a few days before had been the Empress of the
French, the Queen of Italy, the Regent of a vast empire, was in her
father's presence merely a humble and docile daughter, who told him
everything, obeyed him in everything, who abdicated her own free will,
and promised, even swore, to entertain no other ideas or wishes than
such as agreed with his.
Nevertheless, when she arrived at Vienna, Marie Louise had by no
means completely forgotten France and Napoleon. She still had
Frenchmen in her suite; she wrote to her husband and imagined that she
would be allowed to visit him at