Napoleonic Literature
Memoirs of Constant - Vol. II
Chapter XI
Secret liaisons of the Emperor— What Napoleon understood by immorality— The temptations of sovereigns— The Emperor's discretion— Josephine's jealousy— Madame Gazani— Rendezvous in the former apartment of M. de Bourrienne— The Emperor tête-a-tête with a minister— Suspicions and agitation of the Empress— My orders force me to lie— The Empress alleging a falsehood at my expense in order to know the truth— A little reprimand on the subject given to the Empress by the Emperor— I am justified— A passing coolness— Madame de Rémusat lady of honor to the Empress— Nocturnal expedition of Josephine and Madame de Rémusat— The allée des Veuves— The Emperor in good luck— Prince Murat and I wait for him at the door of —— — Anxiety of Murat— Official procurers— I am solicited by certain ladies— Former functions of the first valet de chambre not re-established by the Emperor— Complaisance of a general— Resistance of a lady after her marriage— Mademoiselle E——, reader to the Princess Murat— Portrait of Mademoiselle E—— — Intrigue against the Empress— Interviews at the Tuileries and the results of them— Birth of an imperial infant— Education of this child—Mademoiselle E—— at Fontainebleau— Dissatisfaction of the Emperor— Severity toward the mother and affection for the son— The three sons of Napoleon— The Emperor's diversions at Boulogne— The fair Italian— Discovery and proposal of Murat— Mademoiselle L. B.— Shameful speculation— Visit to Mademoiselle Lenormand.

HIS Majesty used to say that one could recognize an honest man by his conduct toward his wife, his children and his servants, and I hope that these Memoirs will show that the Emperor, in these different relations, acted like an honest man, such as he defined him. He also said that the most dangerous vice in a sovereign was immorality, because he was a law to subjects. What he meant by immorality was, without doubt, a scandalous publicity given to liaisons which should always be kept secret; for, as to these liaisons themselves, he repelled them no more than other people when they were thrown in his way. Any one else, perhaps, in the same position, surrounded by seductions, attacks, and advances of every description, would have resisted temptation less frequently. God forbid, however, that I should undertake to defend His Majesty on this head; I will even grant, if you like, that his conduct was not always in perfect accord with the moral of his discourses; but you must also grant that it was a good deal, for a sovereign, to take the greatest pains to hide his distractions from the public, to whom they might have been a subject of scandal, or, still worse, of imitation, and from his wife, to whom they would have occasioned violent grief. On this head I will give two or three anecdotes which just now occur to me, and which belong, I think, or nearly so, to the period at which my narrative has arrived.

The Empress Josephine was jealous, and, notwithstanding the prudence with which the Emperor conducted his secret liaisons, she was sometimes aware of what was going on.

At Genoa the Emperor had known Madame Gazani, the daughter of an Italian dancer, and he continued to receive her at Paris. One day, when he had an appointment with this dame in the little apartments, he ordered me to remain in his chamber, and to tell everybody who came to ask for him, even the Empress herself, that he was working in his cabinet with a minister.

The interview took place in the apartment formerly occupied by M. de Bourrienne, which communicated by a staircase with His Majesty's bedchamber. This apartment was very simply arranged and decorated; it had a second exit on what was called the dark staircase, because it was very badly lighted. Madame Gazani entered by it, while the Emperor went to meet her by the other one. They had been together but a few minutes when the Empress came into the Emperor's chamber and asked me what her husband was doing. "Madame, the Emperor is much occupied at this moment; he is working in his cabinet with a minister." "Constant, I wish to go in."—"That is impossible, Madame, I have received formal orders not to disturb His Majesty, not even for Her Majesty the Empress." Thereupon the latter turned away dissatisfied, and even angry. At the end of half an hour she came back, and as she renewed her request, I was obliged to renew my response. I was distressed to see Her Majesty's chagrin, but I could not disobey my orders. That same evening, at his couchee, the Emperor said to me, in a severe tone, that the Empress assured him that when she came to ask for him, I had told her that he was shut up with a lady. Without disturbing myself, I replied to the Emperor that he certainly could not believe that. "No," replied the Emperor, returning to the amicable tone with which he usually honored me, "I know you well enough to be assured of your discretion; but woe to the fools who gossip, if I succeed in discovering them." At the couchee of the next day, the Empress entered just as the Emperor was getting into bed, and His Majesty said to her before me: "It is very wrong, Josephine, to attribute lies to this poor Constant; he is not the man to tell you such a story as you have brought to me." The Empress sat down on the side of the bed, began to laugh, and put her pretty little hand on her husband's mouth. As I was in question, I withdrew. During several days Her Majesty was cold and severe toward me; but as that was not natural to her, she soon resumed that air of kindliness which won her all hearts. As to the Emperor's liaison with Madame Gazani, it lasted nearly a year, but their meetings were by no means frequent.

The following trait of jealousy is not so personal to me as the one I have just cited. Madame de R——, wife of one of the prefects of the palace, and the one of her ladies of honor whom the Empress most preferred, found her all in tears and deep affliction one evening. Madame de R—— waited in silence until Her Majesty should deign to inform her of the cause of this violent grief. She did not wait long. Hardly had she entered the salon when Her Majesty exclaimed: "I am sure that he is with a woman now. My dear friend," added she, continuing to weep, "take this light and let us go and listen at his door; we shall hear." Madame de R—— did all she could to dissuade her from this project; she represented to her the lateness of the hour, the darkness of the passage, the danger they would incur of being surprised; but all in vain. Her Majesty put the light in her hand, saying: "You absolutely must accompany me. If you are afraid, I will go first." Madame de R—— obeyed, and the two ladies tiptoed through the corridor by the light of a single candle swayed about by the wind. On reaching the door of the Emperor's antechamber they paused, hardly daring to breathe, and the Empress softly turned the handle. But just as they set foot in the apartment, Roustan, who lay there, and who was fast asleep, gave vent to a formidable and prolonged snore. Apparently the ladies had not expected to find him there, and Madame de R——, imagining she saw him springing out of the foot of the bed, sabre and pistol in hand, turned and ran as fast as possible, still holding her candle, toward the apartment of the Empress, leaving the latter in complete darkness. She did not get her breath until she was in the Empress's bedchamber, and it was not until then that she remembered that she had left her without light in the corridor. Madame de R—— was about to go to meet her when she saw her coming back, holding her sides with laughter, and her grief entirely consoled by this burlesque adventure. Madame de R—— tried to excuse herself. "My dear," said Her Majesty, "you merely anticipated me. That booby of a Roustan frightened me so that I would have set you the example of flight if you had not been still more of a poltroon than I."

I do not know what these ladies would have discovered if their courage had not failed before they reached the end of their expedition; nothing at all, perhaps, for the Emperor seldom received at the Tuileries the person with whom he was smitten for the moment. As has been seen, under the Consulate, he gave his rendezvous in a little house in the allée des Veuves. As Emperor, his amorous interviews likewise took place outside of the château. He went to them disguised, and by night, and exposed himself to all the risks of a lady-killer.

One evening, between eleven o'clock and midnight, the Emperor sent for me, asked for a black coat and a round hat, and bade me follow him. We got into a black carriage, Prince Murat making a third in the party, and Cæsar driving. There was but one lackey to open the door, and neither of the men was in livery. After riding about Paris a little, the Emperor stopped the carriage in the rue de ——. He alighted, took a few steps forward, knocked at a gate, and entered a house alone. The Prince and I remained in the carriage. Hours passed, and we began to be uneasy. The life of the Emperor had been threatened often enough to make it natural that we should fear some new snare or some surprise. The imagination goes fast when it is pursued by such alarms. Prince Murat cursed and swore energetically, sometimes at the imprudence of His Majesty, sometimes at his gallantry, and sometimes at the lady and her complaisance. I was not more at ease than he, but, being calmer, I tried to quiet him. At last, being no longer able to conquer his impatience, the Prince sprang out of the carriage, I followed him, and he had his hand on the knocker of the door when the Emperor emerged from it. The Prince acquainted him with our uneasiness and the reflections we had made on his temerity. "What childishness!" said His Majesty thereupon; "what was there to be so much afraid about? Wherever I am, am I not at home?"

It was entirely of their own accord that certain habitués of the court took pains to mention to the Emperor young and pretty persons who wished to make his acquaintance, for it was not in his character to give any such commissions. I was not enough of a grand lord to find such employment honorable; hence, I would never meddle with affairs of the sort. That, however, was not for lack of having been indirectly sounded, or even openly solicited by certain ladies who aspired to the title of favorites, although that title gave few rights or privileges with the Emperor; but, I say again, I would not enter into such proceedings; I contented myself with the duties imposed by my place, not with other things; and, although His Majesty took pleasure in reviving the usages of the old monarchy, the secret functions of the first valet de chambre were not re-established, and I took care not to claim them.

Plenty of others (not valets de chambre) were less scrupulous than I. General L—— spoke one day to the Emperor of a very pretty damsel whose mother kept a gaming house, and who wished to be presented to him. The Emperor received her only once. A few days after she was married. Some time later the Emperor wished to see her again, and sent for her. But the young woman responded that she no longer belonged to herself, and she refused all the entreaties and offers that were made her. The Emperor did not seem at all dissatisfied about it; on the contrary, he praised Madame D—— for her fidelity to her duties, and strongly approved her conduct.

In 1804, Her Imperial Highness the Princess Murat had a young reader, Mademoiselle E——, in her service. She was tall, slender, well made, a brunette with beautiful black eyes, lively, and very coquettish, and, possibly, between seventeen and eighteen years old. Several persons, who thought it would he to their interest to estrange His Majesty from the Empress his wife, remarked with pleasure the reader's inclination to try the power of her glances on the Emperor, and that of the latter to let himself be caught by them. They fed the fire adroitly and it was one of them that undertook the entire diplomacy of this affair. Certain propositions made by a third party were at once accepted. The fair E—— came to the château in secret, but rarely, and never spent more than two or three hours there. She became pregnant. The Emperor had a house hired for her in the rue Chantereine, where she was delivered of a fine boy, who was endowed at birth with an income of thirty thousand francs. He was at first confided to the care of Madame L——, the nurse of Prince Achille Murat, who kept him three or four years. Afterwards M. M——, His Majesty's secretary, was charged to provide for the education of this child. When the Emperor returned from the island of Elba, the son of Mademoiselle E—— was intrusted to Her Majesty the Empress-mother. The Emperor's connection with Mademoiselle E—— did not last long. One day she came with her mother to Fontainebleau where the court was. She went up to His Majesty's apartment and asked me to announce her. The Emperor was extremely displeased with this proceeding, and sent me to say to Mademoiselle E——, on his part, that he forbade her ever to present herself before him without his permission, and to stay a single moment longer at Fontainebleau. In spite of this severity to the mother, the Emperor tenderly loved the son. I often fetched him to him; he would caress and give him a hundred delicacies, and was much amused with his vivacity and his repartees, which were very witty for his age.

This child and that of the beautiful Pole, of whom I will speak later on, are, with the King of Rome, the only children the Emperor had. He never had any daughters, and I think he would not have liked to have any.

I have seen, I do not know where, that the Emperor, during the longest stay we made in Boulogne, reposed himself at night from the fatigues of the day with a beautiful Italian. Here is what I know of this adventure. While I was dressing His Majesty one morning, in the presence of Prince Murat, His Majesty complained of seeing none but moustached faces, which, said he, was very depressing. The Prince, always ready to offer his services to his brother-in-law on such occasions, mentioned a very beautiful and witty Genoese lady who had the greatest desire to see His Majesty. The Emperor laughingly accorded a tête-a-tête, and the Prince undertook to deliver the message. In two days, by his means, the fair dame had arrived and was installed in the upper town. The Emperor, who was living at Pont-de-Briques, one evening ordered me to take a carriage and go for the protégée of Prince Murat. I obeyed, and brought back with me the beautiful Genoese, who, to avoid scandal, although it was nighttime, was introduced through a small garden situated behind His Majesty's apartments. The poor woman was very much moved and was crying; but she was promptly consoled on seeing that she was welcome; the interview was prolonged until three o'clock in the morning, when I was called to take the lady back. She returned four or five times, and saw the Emperor again at Rambouillet. She was good, simple, not at all intriguing, and never tried to derive any advantage from a liaison which, after all, was only transient.

Another of these favorites of a moment who precipitated herself, one might say, into the Emperor's arms, without giving him time to offer her his attentions, was Mademoiselle L. B., a very pretty creature; she possessed intelligence and a good heart and if she had received a less frivolous education, might, doubtless, have been an estimable woman. But I have every reason to think that her mother had always had the purpose of securing a protector for her second husband by utilizing the youth and beauty of the daughter of the first one; I do not recall his name, but he was of a noble family, a fact on which both mother and daughter greatly congratulated themselves. The young person was a good musician and sang agreeably; but what seemed to me as ridiculous as it was indecent, was to see her, in the presence of a rather large company assembled at the house of her mother, dance ballet dances, in a Costume almost as airy as those of the Opera, with castanets or a tambourine, and terminate her performance by a rehearsal of attitudes and graces. With such an education, she should have found her position quite natural; hence she was much chagrined by the short duration of her liaison with the Emperor. As for the mother, she was in despair about it, and she said to me, with revolting naïveté: "Look at my poor Lise, what a feverish color she has! It comes from her vexation at seeing herself neglected, poor child! You would be so good if you could have her sent for again." To provoke an interview, of which mother and daughter were so desirous, they both came to the chapel of Saint-Cloud, where, during the Mass the poor Lise was ogling the Emperor in a way that made the young women that saw it blush. This was all time lost, and the Emperor paid no attention to it.

Colonel L. B. was aide-de-camp to General L——, governor of Saint-Cloud. The General was a widower, a fact that might excuse the intimacy of his only daughter with the L. B. family, which astonished me greatly. One day when I was dining at the Colonel's with his wife, his stepdaughter, and Mademoiselle L——, the General sent for his aide-de-camp, and I remained alone with these ladies, who strongly entreated me to accompany them to the house of Mademoiselle Lenormand. If I had refused I should have been in their bad graces. We took a carriage and went to the rue de Tournon. Mademoiselle L. B. went first into the cave of the sibyl, remained there a long time, but was very discreet about what was said to her. As for Mademoiselle L——, she told us very ingenuously that she had good news, and that she would soon marry him whom she loved, which, in fact, soon happened.

These damsels urged me to consult the prophetess in my turn, and I soon perceived that I was known; for Mademoiselle Lenormand at once saw in my hand that I had the happiness to approach a great man and to be liked by him, then she added a good deal more bosh of the same sort, which I got rid of, with thanks, as soon as possible, so much did it bore me.

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