Ten Years' Exile. Madame de Staël

he was displeased that one of the first noblemen of the Austrian monarchy should squeeze his hand without ceremony. These new debutans in politeness could not conceive that ease was in good taste. In truth, if they had been at their ease, they would have committed strange inconsistencies, and arrogant stiffness was much better suited to them in the new part they wished to play. Joseph Bonaparte, who negociated the peace of Luneville, invited M. de C. to his charming country seat of Morfontaine, where I happened to meet him. Joseph was extremely fond of rural occupation, and would walk with ease and pleasure in his gardens for eight hours in succession. M. de C. tried to follow him, more out of breath than the Duke of Mayenne, whom Henry IV. amused himself with making walk about, notwithstanding his corpulence. The poor man talked very much of fishing, among the pleasures of the country, because it allowed him to sit down; he absolutely warmed in speaking of the innocent pleasure of catching some little fish with the line.

      When he was ambassador at Petersburg, Paul I. had treated him with the greatest indignity. He and I were playing at backgammon in the drawing room at Morfontaine, when one of my friends came in and informed us of the sudden death of that Sovereign. M. de C. immediately began making the most official lamentations possible on this event. "Although I had reason to complain of him," said he, "I shall always acknowledge the excellent qualities of this prince, and I cannot help regretting his loss." He thought rightly that the death of Paul was a fortunate event for Austria, and for Europe, but he had in his conversation, a court mourning, that was really quite intolerable. It is to be hoped, that the progress of time will rid the world of the courtier spirit, the most insipid of all others, to say nothing more.

      Bonaparte was extremely alarmed at the death of Paul, and it is said, that on that occasion he uttered the first—Ah, my God! that was ever heard to proceed from his lips. He had no reason, however, to disturb himself; for the French were then more disposed to endure tyranny than the Russians.

      I was invited to general Berthier's one day, when the first consul was to be of the party; and as I knew that he expressed himself very unfavourably about me, it struck me that he might perhaps accost me with some of those rude expressions, which he often took pleasure in addressing to females, even to those who paid their court to him; I wrote down therefore as they occured to me, before I went to the entertainment, a variety of tart and piquant replies which I might make to what I supposed he might say to me. I did not wish to be taken by surprise, if he allowed himself to insult me, for that would have been to show a want both of character and understanding; and as no person could promise themselves not to be confused in the presence of such a man, I prepared myself before hand to brave him. Fortunately the precaution was unnecessary; he only addressed the most common questions possible to me; and the same thing happened to all of his opponents, to whom he attributed the possibility of replying to him: at all times, however, he never attacks, but when he feels himself much the strongest. During supper, the first consul stood behind the chair of Madame Bonaparte, and balanced himself sometimes on one leg, and sometimes on the other, in the manner of the princes of the house of Bourbon. I made my neighbour remark this vocation for royalty, already so decided.

CHAPTER 7.

       Table of Contents

      Paris in 1801

      The opposition in the tribunate still continued; that is to say, about twenty members out of a hundred, tried to speak out against the measures of every kind, with which tyranny was preparing. A grand question arose, in the law which gave to the government the fatal power of creating special tribunals to try persons accused of state crimes; as if the handing over a man to these extraordinary tribunals, was not already prejudging the question, that is to say, if he is a criminal, and a criminal of state; and as if, of all crimes, political crimes were not those which required the greatest precaution and independence in the manner of examining them, as the government is in such causes almost always a party interested.

      We have since seen what are the military commissions to try crimes of state; and the death of the Duke d'Eughien marks to all the horror which that hypocritical power ought to inspire, which covers murder with the mantle of the law.

      The resistance of the tribunate, feeble as it was, displeased the first consul; not that it was any obstacle to his designs, but it kept up the habit of thinking in the nation, which he wished to stifle entirely. He put into the journals among other things, an absurd argument against the opposition. Nothing is so simple or so proper, was it there said, as an opposition in England, because the king is the enemy of the people; but in a country, where the executive government is itself named by the people, it is opposing the nation to oppose its representative. What a number of phrases of this kind have the scribes of Napoleon deluged the public with for ten years! In England or America the meanest peasant would laugh in your face at a sophism of this nature; in France, all that is desired, is to have a phrase ready, with which to give to one's interest the appearance of conviction.

      Very few persons showed themselves strangers to the desire of having places; a great number were ruined, and the interest of their wives and children, or of their nephews and nieces, if they had no children, or of their cousins, if they had no nephews, obliged them, they said, to seek employment from the government. The great strength of the heads of the state in France, is the prodigious taste that the people have for places; vanity even makes them more sought for, than the emolument attached to them. Bonaparte received thousands of petitions for every office, from the highest to the lowest. If he had not had naturally a profound contempt for the human race, he would have conceived it in running over petitions, signed by names illustrious from their ancestry, or celebrated by revolutionary actions in complete opposition to the new functions they were ambitious of fulfilling.

      The winter of 1801 at Paris was made extremely agreeable to me, by the readiness with which Fouche granted the applications I made to him for the return of different emigrants: in this way he left me, in the midst of my disgrace, the pleasure of being useful, and I retain a most grateful recollection to him for it. It must be confessed, that in the actions of women, there is always a little coquetry, and that the greater part of their very virtues are mixed with the desire of pleasing, and of being surrounded by friends, whose attachment to them is heightened by the feeling of obligation. In this point of view only, can our sex be pardoned for being fond of influence: but there are occasions when we ought even to sacrifice the pleasure of obliging to preserve our dignity: for we may do every thing for the sake of others, excepting to degrade our character. Our own conscience is as it were the treasure of the Almighty, which we are not permitted to make use of for the advantage of others.

      Bonaparte was still at some expense on account of the Institute, upon which he piqued himself so much when he was in Egypt: but there was among the men of letters, and the savants, a petty philosophical opposition, unfortunately of a very bad description, which was entirely directed against the re-establishment of religion. By a fatal caprice, the enlightened spirits in France wished to console themselves for the slavery of this world, by endeavouring to destroy the hopes of a better: this singular inconsistency would not have happened under the protestant religion; but the catholic clergy had enemies, whom their courage and misfortunes had not yet disarmed; and perhaps, it is really difficult to make the authority of the pope, and of priests subject to the pope, harmonize with the independence of a state. Be that as it may, the Institute exhibited for religion, independant of its ministers, none of that profound respect, inseparable from a lofty combination of mind and genius; and Bonaparte was left to support, against men of more value than himself, opinions which were of more value than them.

      In this year (1801), the first consul ordered the king of Spain to make war upon Portugal, and the feeble monarch of that illustrious nation condemned his army to this expedition, equally servile and unjust, against a neighbour, who had no hostile intentions, and whose only offence was his alliance with that England, which has since shewn itself so true a friend to Spain: and all this in obedience to the man who was preparing to deprive him of his very existence. When we have seen these same Spaniards giving with so much energy the signal of the resurrection of the world, we learn to know what nations are, and what are the consequences of refusing them a legal means of expressing their opinion, and regulating their own destiny.