  My grandmother’s stay at Lille was occasionally varied by visits to her son in Paris. The pleasures of society were but a prelude to the literary success that he achieved a few months later; and indeed he was already practicing composition in his frequent letters to his mother on politics and literature. Mme. de RÉmusat had more leisure at Lille than in Paris, and, although her health was still delicate, she indulged her taste for intellectual pursuits. Hitherto she had written nothing but the Memoirs that she had afterward destroyed, and a few short tales and essays. In the leisure of a country life she now attempted a romance in the form of letters, called “Les Lettres EspagÑols, ou l’Ambitieux.” While she was working at this with ardor and success, the posthumous work of Mme. de StaËl, “ConsidÉrations sur la Revolution FranÇaise,” came out in 1818, and made a great impression on her. Now that sixty years have elapsed, it is difficult for us to realize the extraordinary effect of Mme. de StaËl’s eloquent dissertation on the principles of the Revolution. The opinions of the author, then quite novel, are now merely noble truisms obvious to all. But in the days that immediately followed the Empire they were something more. Everything was then new, and the younger generation, who had undergone twenty years of tyranny, had to learn over again that which their fathers had known so well in 1789. My grandmother was especially struck by the eloquent pages in which the author gives somewhat declamatory expression to her hatred of Napoleon. Mme. de RÉmusat felt a certain sympathy with the author’s sentiments, but she could not forget that at one time she had thought differently. People who are fond of writing are easily tempted into explaining their conduct and feelings on paper. She conceived a strong desire to arrange all her reminiscences, to describe the Empire as she had seen it, and how she had at first loved and admired, next condemned and dreaded, afterward suspected and hated, and finally renounced it. The Memoirs she had destroyed in 1815 would have been the most accurate exposition of this succession of events, situations, and feelings. It was vain to think of rewriting them, but it was possible, with the help of a good memory and an upright intention, to compose others which should be equally sincere. Full of this project, she wrote to her son (May 27, 1818): “I have taken up a new notion. You must know that I wake every morning at six o’clock, and that I write regularly from that hour until half-past nine. Well, I was sitting up with the manuscript of my ‘Lettres EspagÑols’ all scattered about me, when certain chapters of Mme. de StaËl’s book came into my head. I flung my romance aside, and took up a clean sheet of paper, bitten with the idea that I must write about Bonaparte. On I went, describing the death of the Duke d’Enghien and that dreadful week I spent at Malmaison; and, as I am an emotional person, I seemed to be living all through that time over again. Words and events came back of themselves; between yesterday and to-day I have written twenty pages, and am somewhat agitated in consequence.” The same circumstance which reawakened the recollections of the mother aroused the literary tastes of the son; and while he was publishing an article on Mme. de StaËl in the “Archives,” his first appearance in print, he wrote as follows to his mother on the same date, May 27, 1818. Their respective letters crossed on the road: “‘All honor to the sincere!’ This book, my dear mother, has renewed my regret that you have burned your Memoirs, and has made me most anxious that you should retrieve that loss. You really owe this to yourself, to us, to the interests of truth. Read up the old almanacs; study the ‘Moniteur’ page by page; get back your old letters from your friends, and go over them, especially those to my father. Try to remember not only the details of events, but your own impressions of them. Try to resuscitate the views you formerly held, even the illusions you have lost; recall your very errors. Show how you, with many other honorable and sensible people, indignant and disgusted with the horrors of the Revolution, were carried away by natural aversions, and beguiled by enthusiasm for one man, which was in reality highly patriotic. Explain how we had all of us become, as it were, strangers to political life. We had no dread of the empire of an individual; we went out to meet it. Then show how this man either became corrupt, or else displayed his true character as his power increased. Tell how it unfortunately happened that, as you lost one by one your illusions concerning him, you became more and more dependent, and how the less you submitted to him in heart, the more you were obliged to obey him in fact; how at last, after having believed in the uprightness of his policy because you were mistaken in himself, your discovery of his true character led you to a correct view of his system; and how moral indignation finally brought you by degrees to what I may call a political hatred of him. This, my dear mother, is what I entreat of you to do. You see what I mean, do you not? and you will do it.” Two days after, on the 30th of May, my grandmother replied as follows: “Is it not wonderful how perfectly we understand each other? I am reading the book, and I am as much struck by it as you are. I regret my poor Memoirs for new reasons, and I take up my pen again without quite knowing whither it will lead me; for, my dear child, this task which you have set me, and which of itself is tempting, is also formidable. I shall, however, set about reviving my impressions of certain epochs, at first without order or sequence, just as things come back to me. You may trust me to set down the very truth. Yesterday, when I was alone and at my desk, I was trying to recall my first meeting with this wretched man. A tide of remembrance rushed over me, and that which you so justly call my political hatred was ready to fade away and give place to my former illusions.” A few days later, on the 8th of June, 1818, she dwells on the difficulties of her task: “Do you know that I need all my courage to do as you tell me? I am like a person who, having spent ten years at the galleys, is asked to write an account of how he passed his time. My heart sinks when I recall old memories. There is pain both in my past fancies and in my present feelings. You are right in saying I love truth; but it follows that I can not, like so many others, recall the past with impunity, and I assure you that, for the last week, I have risen quite saddened from the desk at which you and Mme. de StaËl have placed me. I could not reveal these feelings to any one but you. Others would not understand, and would only laugh at me.” On the 28th of September and the 8th of October of the same year, she writes to her son: “If I were a man, I should certainly devote a part of my life to studying the League; being only a woman, I confine myself to verbal utterances about you know whom. What a man! what a man! It terrifies me to retrace it all. It was my misfortune to be very young when I was placed near him; I did not reflect on what passed before me; but now that we are both older, I and the generation to which I belong, my memories move me more than did events at that time. If you come ... I think you will find that I have not lost much time this summer. I have already written nearly five hundred pages, and I was going to write much more; the task lengthens as I work at it. Afterward much time and patience will be required to put all this material in order. Perhaps I shall never have either one or the other; if so, that will be your business when I shall be no longer here.” “Your father,” she writes again, “says that he does not know of any one to whom I could show what I am writing. He declares that no one excels me in ‘the talent for being true’ as he expresses it. So, therefore, I write for nobody in particular. Some day you will find my manuscripts among my effects, and you can do what you like with them.” On the 8th of October, 1818, she writes: “There is a thought that sometimes troubles me. I say to myself, ‘Suppose some day my son publishes this, what will be said of me?’ Then the fear seizes me that I shall be held to have been malicious, or at least ill-natured, and I rack my brain for something to praise. But this man (Bonaparte) was such a ruthless destroyer of all worth and we were brought so low that I am straitened by the demands of truth, and I grow quite disheartened.” These fragments of her letters indicate the spirit in which the Memoirs of Mme. de RÉmusat were written; and it was not that of a literary pastime, nor a pleasure of the imagination. Her motive was neither ambition to be an author, nor the desire to put forward an apology. The love of truth, the political spectacle before her eyes, and the influence of a son who became day by day more strongly confirmed in those Liberal opinions which were destined to be the delight and the honor of his life—these things gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two years. She understood that noble policy which places the rights of man above the rights of the State. Nor was this all. As often happens to persons deeply engaged in intellectual work, her task became plain and easy, and she led a more active life than at any previous time. In spite of failing health, she constantly traveled from Lille to Paris; she acted the part of Elmire in “Tartuffe” at M. MolÉ’s house at ChamplÂtreux; she commenced a work on the Women of the Seventeenth Century, which she afterward expanded into her “Essai sur l’Education des Femmes;” she supplied Dupuytren with material for a panegyric on Corvisart, and she even published a tale in the “LycÉe FranÇais.” In the midst of the happiness which she derived from her quiet life and her busy mind, from her husband’s official and her son’s literary success, her health failed. First came a weakness of the eyes, which, without actually threatening her sight, occasioned her both pain and inconvenience; then followed a general delicacy of the system, in which the stomach was chiefly affected. After alternate changes for the better and the worse, her son brought her to Paris on the 28th of November, 1821, in a suffering condition, which was alarming to those who loved her, but did not appear to the doctors to indicate immediate danger. Broussais, however, took a desponding view of her case, and my father was then first struck by the power of induction to which the discoveries and the errors of that eminent man are alike due. Notwithstanding her illness, she occupied herself on her return to Lille with literary and historical work, and received company, including a great number of political personages. She was still able to feel interested in the fall of the Duke Decazes, and she foresaw that the coming into power of M. de VillÈle—that is to say, of the ultras or reactionaries, as they are now called—would render it impossible for her husband to retain the Prefecture of Lille; and, in fact, he was superseded on the 9th of January, 1822. Before this occurred, Mme. de RÉmusat was no more. She expired suddenly in the night, December 16, 1821, aged forty-one years. She bequeathed to her son a lifelong sorrow, and to her friends the memory of a remarkable and charming woman. Not one of those friends is now living; M. Pasquier, M. MolÉ, M. Guizot, and M. Leclerc have recently passed away. I render her memory the truest homage in my power by the publication of these unfinished Memoirs, which, with the exception of a few chapters, she was unable to read over or correct. The work was to have been divided into five parts, corresponding with five distinct epochs. She completed only three, which treat of the interval between 1802 and 1808; that is to say, from her first appearance at Court to the breaking out of the war in Spain. The unwritten portions would have described the period that elapsed between that war and the divorce (1808-1809), and the five following years, ending with the fall of the Emperor. I am well aware that a work of the nature of this one is calculated to bring down upon both its author and its editor much blame, many insinuations, and a great deal of political animosity. Its apparent contradictions will be held up to observation, rather than the interesting analogy of the opinions of three generations which it sets forth, and the difference in the times. It will be a theme for wonder that any man could be a chamberlain and any woman a lady-in-waiting, and yet that both could be so far from servile, so liberal, so little shocked by the 18th Brumaire, so patriotic, so much fascinated by that man of genius, Bonaparte, and so severe upon his faults, so clear-sighted respecting the majority of the members of the Imperial family, so indulgent or so blind with regard to others who have left an equally fatal impress on our national history. It will, however, be difficult to avoid doing justice to the sincerity, the honesty, and the intelligence of the author, or to read the book without deriving from it an increased aversion to absolute power, a keener perception of its sophistry, and the hollowness of the apparent prosperity with which it dazzles public opinion. These impressions I have especially derived from it, and I desire to retain them. It would have been sufficient preface to this book had I written only those words which my father uttered, sixty years ago, when, on reading Mme. de StaËl, he asked his mother to tell him the story of the cruel years of the First Empire: “All honor to the sincere!” PAUL DE RÉMUSAT.
MEMOIRS OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE |
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