Memoirs of the Empress Josephine Bonaparte. Madame de Rémusat

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      VI

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ