A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette—­Queen Marie Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise.  She had regarded the Emperor of the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in trouble she forgot the past.  She declared that if it was still the determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of consolation, it was her granddaughter’s duty to assume disguise, tie sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.

There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact, against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate.  It is moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was ill-assorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the divine law of marriage.  Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory.  Hence she urges a reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the penalty of the errors she had committed.

“I could listen,” says Napoleon, “to the intelligence of the death of my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature—­not the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.  But when alone in my chamber, then I suffer.  Then the feelings of the man burst forth.”

We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being overcome with soft emotions.  We have regarded him as the personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.  Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son, whom he called “Mon pauvre petit chou.”  “I do not blush to admit,” said he on a memorable occasion, “that I have a good deal of a mother’s tenderness.  I could never count on the faithfulness of a father who did not love his children.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[18] “Correspondance de Napoleon,” vol. 128, p. 133.

[19] Quoted from De Wertheimer’s “Duke of Reichstadt,” p. 330.