THE SECOND WIFE OF NAPOLEON.* Vats is the most interesting,

as it is the most authentic, memoir that has been given to the world of the second Empress of the French, during the four years which she passed in France. It is only that period in thelife of Marie Louise which is interesting to us ; her after-story is merely ignoble : not even the malevolent spirit in which it has been related by biographers all too ready to accept the conclusions of the scandalous chronicles of the time without doubt or mercy, can lend attractiveness to it. For the purpose of the student of the romance of history, Marie Louise may be suffered to vanish from the scene after the success of the cruel stratagem which prevented Napoleon from overtaking her at Etampes, and finally delivered her over to her evil counsellors and her own devices. She ceases at that point to belong to the romance of history, just as her cousin, the Duchess° de Berri, ceases to belong to it after the episode of La Vendee.

The widow of General Durand, who tells the story of the four years of the union of Marie Louise with Napoleon, was for the whole of that time in close attendance upon her. She was one of six ladies who at first bore the title of Dames d'Annonees, because They had to announce the persons who presented themselves, but were afterwards called Premieres Dames de l'Imperairice ; and her narrative puts Napoleon and Marie Louise before us with as much vividness as the celebrated Memoirs of Madame tie Bemusat show us the Emperor and his first wife. Madame Durand was evidently a woman of a gentler nature and more capable of gratitude than Josephine's cold, self-interested Lady.in-Waiting who, owing to Napoleon everything she and her husband possessed—including the position that enabled them to forsake him with profit—not only never has a good word for him, but when she is forced to record a great action of his, explains it by a base motive. The reader discerns the finer fibre in Madame Durand when she says, a propos; of the arrival of the Empress at Brannan: —"Among the numbers of persons awaiting her there were several who had known Marie Antoinette. All these pictured to themselves what must ho the feelings of Marie Louise on -coming to seat herself upon the throne which had brought such misfortune to her grand-aunt?' The reader also discerns the nature of the Princess in the fact that these sentiments were entirely thrown away. The daughter of the Cresars was wholly unmoved by reminiscences, associations, apprehensions, or, indeed, deep feelings of any kind ; no more troubled by the shade of Marie Antoinette than by the living reality of Josephine. She was but little moved at parting with the suite who had accompanied her from Vienna, and she accepted her new household with smiling readiness. Probably it was this general complacency that misled her sister.in-law, Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, who had come to Brannan to receive her, into that error in dealing with Marie Louise which she was never allowed to repair. The anecdote is worth notice, for it affords a fine illustration of the methods of those who are born to greatness, and the ways of those who have greatness thrust upon them. Madame de Lajenski, her Grande Maitresse, was the only member of her former household who was permitted to enter France with the Austrian Princess, and to her the French women, all parvenues, with the exception of the Comtesse de Limey (Rochefort's grandmother), objected. Thereupon Caroline Bonaparte made a false move in her game, which was that of acquiring supreme ascendency over Marie Louie(' :— " She might have done so," says the writer, "had she acted more adroitly. M. de Talleyrand said of her that she had the head of Cromwell on the shoulders of a pretty woman. She was naturally clever, quick, and agreeable; what she lacked was the art of hiding her love of power, and when she did not attain her object, it was because she tried to grasp it too quickly. From the moment at which she first saw the Austrian Princess, she believed herself to have fathomed her character, but she was completely wrong. She took her timidity for weakness, her embarrassment for awkwardness, and she closed against herself for ever the heart which ahe had aspired to rule."

Caroline dismissed Madame Lajenski—she even endeavoured to prevent her from taking leave of Marie Louise, who was deeply attached to her—and banished with her the poor girl's pet dog, on the pretext that the Emperor had frequently objected to Josephine's dogs. The Empress submitted; but she never for- gave Caroline, and from that hour to their last meeting, she

0:2.4ora loon and Marie Louie., 1810 1814. A Memoir. By Madame In 06u6rale First Lady to the Empress Mario Louise. London: Sampson Low and Co.

remained a polite and smiling stranger to the upstart who had blundered so egregiously.

Madame Durand's account of the meeting of the Emperor with his bride is partly amusing, partly revolting, and wholly corroborative of Michelet's. Bat Marie Louise had been falling in love with Napoleon's letters (she must have been clever to decipher them) before he jumped into her carriage at four leagues short of Soiseons, where they were to have met, and she uttered her first words to him,—" Sire, your portrait is not flattered." There can be no doubt that she became as mach attached to him as it was in her nature to b3, and that her lack of humour0 and also of sensibility, preserved her from suffering from the pompous vulgarity of her surroundings, and the almost Oriental regime to which she was subjected. The latter, which seems to have been arranged in advance by Napoleon, but not in any way suggested by insight into the character of Marie Louise as revealed by subsequent events, presents one of the most extraordinary pictures in all history. Madame Durand's record of the life of well-fed, richly clothed, incessantly-watched, merci- lessly-disciplined dullness to which the Empress was condemned, with its insulting restrictions and its petty etiquette, is perfectly candid and unemotional. The writer takes it all as a matter of course that the Empress should never have been allowed an hour's solitude, the slightest choice of companions or occupations, or any opportunity of exchanging a word with a man ; that she should have to read smuggled novels by stealth, and be reduced to make a confidant of the Duchene de Montebello, who connived with Dr. Corvisart to extract money from the credulous young Princess by each respectively bemoaning the other's poverty. The cold- hearted widow of Marshal Lawns makes, indeed, a striking figure in the book, and the callous cruelty of her conduct to the unfortunate Empress when the long farewell to all her great- ness had been spoken, would be accounted exceptional baseness and ingratitude in any story but this. When, however, we have studied the family picture presented by the Bonapartes at Blois, after the news of the great cataclysm reached them, Madame de Montebello subsides into comparative insignificance. The only person, indeed, who shines in this narrative, which is an epitome of the mingled grandeur and meanness of the epoch, is the Comtesse de Montesquion (sister of the brave and noble Dachesse de Dondeauville), whose ill-requited devotion to the poor little King of Rome is recorded with the praise it merits. Marie Louise bee always been accused of indifference to her child, in contrast to Napoleon's great fondness for him ; but one derives from this narrative rather the idea that she, being a very young mother, hardly knew what to make of a baby, from whom she was severed by the absurd etiquette of the parvenu Court, so different from the simplicity of her father's, and for whom she never could do any motherly office; while she neither understood nor shared the " dynastic " ambition of her husband. We derive a pleasing impression of her on the whole, of course, as a thoroughly second-rate woman, and the book is a curious illustration of the extent to which the most romantic situations may be combined, in real life, with a commonplace and even vulgar routine of existence within them. There is a kind of lurid poetry in the position of these two people, perfectly fascinating to the imagination; there is no more prosaic story in history than that of their married life, even when we read of the wondrous triumphal tour, and that fairy-tale sojourn at Dresden—during which the Emperor of Austria informed his terrible son-in-law that he had acquired indisputable proof of the former sovereignty of the Bonaparte family at Treviso, and Napoleon was so delighted that he abruptly quitted his Majesty, and went off to tell the news to Marie Louise—even when we

read how it all ended, in defeat, treachery, trickery, and deser- tion. Nothing more ignominious than the flight of the Imperial Court to Blois has been recorded in history ; the Empress is the least despicable figure in the cowardly crowd,—and that is all that can be said for her. The Emperor was an hoar too late to arrest her flight at Itambouillet—(the incident reminds us of the arrival

of Charles I. at Exeter, just too late to see his wife, and destined never to see her again)—and Madame Durand explains, as she

only was in a position to explain it, the vacillation of Marie Louise and her final refusal to return to Paris. This is the fairest statement of the case that has been made, to our know- ledge; it is indisputably the most authentic :—

"For a few days after her arrival [at Blois], Marie Lonise was in ignorance of all that had taken place in Paris. The decisions of the Provisional Government and the decrees of the Senate were unknown to her; all the newspapers were kept from her; the Bourbons were never mentioned to her. She therefore anticipated no other mis- fortnne in addition to that of Napoleon's being obliged to make peace on any conditions that might be imposed upon him. She was also far from imagining that the Emperor of Austria, her own father, meant to dethrone his eon-in-law and deprive his own grandson of a prospective crown."

It was a whole week before the &nth was made known to the

Empress, and the following was the manner of its revelation. Madame Durand, who had remained in Paris, was about to rejoin Marie Louise ; and on April 4th she was told by certain persons that she would have to convey papers of pressing importance to Blois. Arriving there on the 7th, she handed the papers entrusted to her, and also all the newspapers and the decrees of the Provisional Government, to the Empress, who could hardly believe what she read. The narrative con- tinues i-

" The despatches whieh Madame D— had brought were from the small number of persons who had remained faithful, and they urged and entreated her to return to Paris before the arrival of a Prince of the Home of Bourbon, assuring her of the Regency for herself and the throne for her son if she would take this step. Now easily it could be done was proved by the fact that the lady charged with these despatches had travelled alone in a post- chaise, with a single servant, and bad not once had occasion to use her passport. Marie Louise promised to return to Paris ; she seemed resolved to do no on the very same evening, when Dr. Corrisart and Madame de Montebello opposed her intention. The cowards who composed the Council of Regency earns to the support of these evil advisers. The unfortunate Empress was again deceived, and the opportunity was lost. A few days later she learned simultaneously that Napoleon had abdicated, and that he had embarked for the Island of Elba.'

That Marie Louise kept up a much more frequent corre- spondence with her husband while be remained in the island, than was suspected by her family or the European Powers, we have learned from her own statement, recorded in the Journal and Letters of Mary Frampton. That very interesting work also records an extraordinarily frank admission by Marie Louise of her infidelity to Napoleon, and assigns the fact as her reason for not joining him at Elba. Her grandmother, the ex-Queen of Naples, took her roundly to task for her desertion of her hus- band. Marie Louise pleaded the obstacles that had been opposed to her return to him. "My daughter," said the daughter of Maria Theresa, "one can always jump out of a window." When Madame Durand, who afterwards entered the service of the Duchess of Angouleme, on the recommendation of the Empress, takes leave of the feeble woman whom she had served and liked, she devotes several chapters to Napoleon. These are full of vitality and interest ; the strange contradictions of the nature of the great man, who could be so little, come out strongly in her simple, straightforward narrative. The few lines which alone we can quote are very characteristic i- " One day, when he was talking with the Empress about some persons of whose conduct he did not approve, Napoleon said:— . Chastity in a woman is what courage is in a man. I despise a coward, and a woman without modesty I' Talking of Corvisart, he said He is an egotist. He has entrails, but not bowels.' (Here the Emperor unconsciously quoted Sarah Jennings's judgment on Queen Anne.) The Empress protested against this, and said every-

body was selfish, that she herself was selfish. Don't say, my Louise,' said Napoleon, gravely, that you are selfish ; I know no more hideous vice: "

This from the profoundest egotist the world ever saw, from the man who said of the Russian campaign,—" After all, what has it cost me ? Only 300,000 men !"

It is very interesting to read the recently published volume of the letters of the Queen of Wartemberg to her father, in which she describes her sojourn with King Jerome at his brother's Court, the first fervour of Napoleon's love for Marie Louise, and the brief hope of peace which his marriage offered to Europe. The testimony of these letters is confirmatory not only of the truth of Madame Durand'a narrative, but of the justness of her views.