When Napoleon Bonaparte, the shabby, sallow-faced, out-of-work captain of artillery, was kicking his heels in morose idleness at Marseilles, and whiling away the dul hours in making love to Desiree Clary, the pretty daughter of the silk-merchant in the Rue des Phoceens, his sisters were living with their mother, the Signora Letizia, in a sordid fourth-floor apartment in a slum near the Cannebiere, and running wild in the Marseilles streets.
Strange tales are told of those early years of the sisters of an Emperor-to-be--Elisa Bonaparte, future Grand Duchess of Tuscany; Pauline, embryo Princess Borghese; and Caroline, who was to wear a crown as Queen of Naples--high-spirited, beautiful girls, brimful of frolic and fun, laughing at their poverty, decking themselves out in cheap, home-made finery, and flirting outrageously with every good-looking young man who was willing to pay homage to their _beaux yeux_. If Marseilles deigned to notice these pretty young madcaps, it was only with the cold eyes of disapproval; for such "shameless goings-on" were little less than a scandal.
The pity of it was that there was no one to check their escapades.
Their mother, the imposing Madame Mere of later years, seemed indifferent what her daughters did, so long as they left her in peace; their brothers, Kings-to-be, were too much occupied with their own love-making or their pranks to spare them a thought. And thus the trio of tomboys were left, with a loose rein, to indulge every impulse that entered their foolish heads. And a right merry time they had, with their dancing, their private theatricals, the fun behind the scenes, and their promiscuous love affairs, each serious and thrilling until it gave place to a successor.
Of the three Bonaparte "graces" the most lovely by far (though each was passing fair) was Pauline, who, though still little more than a child, gave promise of that rare perfection of face and figure which was to make her the most beautiful woman in al France. "It is impossible, with either pen or brush," wrote one who knew her, "to do any justice to her charms--the brilliance of her eyes, which dazzled and thrilled al on whom they fel ; the glory of her black hair, rippling in a cascade to her knees; the classic purity of her Grecian profile, the wild-rose delicacy of her complexion, the proud, dainty poise of her head, and the exquisite modelling of the figure which inspired Canova's 'Venus Victrix.'"
Such was Pauline Bonaparte, whose charms, although then immature, played such havoc with the young men of Marseilles, and who thus early began that career of conquest which was to afford so much gossip for the tongue of scandal. That the winsome little minx had her legion of lovers from the day she set foot in Marseilles, at the age of thirteen, we know; but it was not until Freron came on the scene that her volatile little heart was touched--Freron, the handsome coxcomb and arch-revolutionary, who was sent to Marseilles as a Commissioner of the Convention.
To Pauline, the gay, gal ant Parisian, penniless adventurer though he was, was a veritable hero of romance; and at sight of him she completely lost her heart. It was a _grande passion_, which he was by no means slow to return. Those were delicious hours which Pauline spent in the company of her beloved "Stanislas," hours of ecstasy; and when he left Marseilles she pursued him with the most passionate protestations.
"Yes," she wrote, "I swear, dear Stanislas, never to love any other than thee; my heart knows no divided al egiance. It is thine alone. Who could oppose the union of two souls who seek to find no other happiness than in a mutual love?" And again, "Thou knowest how I worship thee. It is not possible for Paulette to live apart from her adored Stanislas. I love thee for ever, most passionately, my beautiful god, my adorable one--I love thee, love thee, love thee!"
In such hot words this child of fifteen poured out her soul to the Paris dandy. "Neither mamma," she vowed, "nor anyone in the world shal come between us." But Pauline had not counted on her brother Napoleon, whose foot was now placed on the ladder of ambition, at the top of which was an Imperial crown, and who had other designs for his sister than to marry her to a penniless nobody. In vain did Pauline rage and weep, and declare that "she would die--_voila tout!_" Napoleon was inexorable; and the flower of her first romance was trodden ruthlessly under his feet.
When Junot, his own aide-de-camp, next came awooing Pauline, he was equal y obdurate. "No," he said to the young soldier; "you have nothing, she has nothing. And what is twice nothing?" And thus lover number two was sent away disconsolate.
Napoleon's sun was now in the ascendant, and his family were basking in its rays. From the Marseilles slums they were transported first to a sumptuous villa at Antibes; then to the Castle of Montebel o, at Naples.
The days of poverty were gone like an evil dream; the sisters of the famous General and coming Emperor were now young ladies of fashion, courted and fawned on. Their lovers were not Marseilles tradesmen or obscure soldiers and journalists (like Junot and Freron), but brilliant Generals and men of the great world; and among them Napoleon now sought a husband for his prettiest and most irresponsible sister.
This, however, proved no easy task. When he offered her to his favourite General, Marmont, he was met with a polite refusal. "She is indeed charming and lovely," said Marmont; "but I fear I could not make her happy." Then, waxing bolder, he continued: "I have dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, virtue; and these dreams I can scarcely hope to realise in your sister." Albert Permon, Napoleon's old schoolfel ow, next declined the honour of Pauline's hand, although it held the bait of a high office and splendid fortune.
The explanation of these refusals is not far to seek if we believe Arnault's description of Pauline--"An extraordinary combination of the most faultless physical beauty and the oddest moral laxity. She had no more manners than a schoolgirl--she talked incoherently, giggled at everything and nothing, mimicked the most serious personages, put out her tongue at her sister-in-law.... She was a good child naturally rather than voluntarily, for she had no principles."
But Pauline was not to wait long, after al , for a husband. Among the many men who fluttered round her, willing to woo if not to wed the empty-headed beauty, was General Leclerc, young and rich, but weak in body and mind, "a quiet, insignificant-looking man," who at least loved her passionately, and would make a pliant husband to the capricious little autocrat. And we may be sure Napoleon heaved a sigh of relief when his madcap sister was safely tied to her weak-kneed General.
Pauline was at last free to conduct her flirtations secure from the frowns of the brother she both feared and adored, and she seems to have made excellent use of her opportunities; and, what was even more to her, to encourage to the ful her passion for finery. Dress and love filled her whole life; and while her idolatrous husband lavishly supplied the former, he turned a conveniently blind eye to the latter.
Remarkable stories are told of Pauline's extravagant and daring costumes at this time. Thus, at a great ball in Madame Permon's Paris mansion, she appeared in a dress of classic scantiness of Indian muslin, ornamented with gold palm leaves. Beneath her breasts was a cincture of gold, with a gorgeous jewelled clasp; and her head was wreathed with bands spotted like a leopard's skin, and adorned with bunches of gold grapes.
When this bewitching Bacchante made her appearance in the ballroom the sensation she created was so great that the dancing stopped instantly; women and men alike climbed on chairs to catch a glimpse of the rare and radiant vision, and murmurs of admiration and envy ran round the _salon_. Her triumph was complete. In the hush that fol owed, a voice was heard: "_Quel dommage!_ How lovely she would be, if it weren't for her ears. If I had such ears, I would cut them off, or hide them."
Pauline heard the cruel words. The flush of mortification and anger flamed in her cheeks; she burst into tears and walked out of the room.
Madame de Coutades, her most jealous rival, had found a rich revenge.
General Leclerc did not live long to play the slave to his little autocrat; and when he died at San Domingo, the beautiful widow returned to France, accompanied by his embalmed body, with her glorious hair, which she had cut off for the purpose, wreathing his head! She had not, however, worn her weeds many months before she was once more surrounded by her court of lovers--actors, soldiers, singers, on each of whom in turn she lavished her smiles; and such time as she could spare from their flatteries and ogling she spent at the card-table, with fortune-tellers, or, chief joy of al , in decking her beauty with wondrous dresses and jewels.
But the charming widow, sister of the great Napoleon, was not long to be left unclaimed; and this time the choice fell on Prince Camillo Borghese, a handsome, black-haired Italian, who allied to a head as vain and empty as her own the physical graces and gifts of an Admirable Crichton, and who, moreover, was lord of al the famed Borghese riches.
Pauline had now reached dizzy heights, undreamed of in the days, only ten short years earlier, when she was coquetting in home-made finery with the young tradesmen of Marseilles. She was a Princess, bearing the greatest name in al Italy; and to this dignity her gratified brother added that of Princess of Gustalla. Al the world-famous Borghese jewels were hers to deck her beauty with--a small Golconda of priceless gems; there was gold galore to satisfy her most extravagant whims; and she was still young--only twenty-five--and in the very zenith of her loveliness.
Picture, then, the pride with which, one early day of her new bridehood, she drove to the Palace of St Cloud in the gorgeous Borghese State carriage, behind six horses, and with an escort of torch-bearers, to pay a formal call on her sister-in-law, Josephine, Empress-to-be. She had decked herself in a wonderful creation of green velvet; she was ablaze from head to foot with the Borghese diamonds. Such a dazzling vision could not fail to fill Josephine with envy--Josephine, who had hitherto treated her with such haughty patronage.
As she sailed into the _salon_ in al her Queen of Sheba splendour, it was to be greeted by her sister-in-law in a modest dress of muslin, without a solitary gem to relieve its simplicity; and--horror!--to find that the room had been re-decorated in blue by the artful Josephine--a colour absolutely fatal to her green magnificence! It was thus a very disgusted Princess who made her early exit from the palace between a double line of bowing flunkeys, masking her anger behind an affectation of ultra-Royal dignity.
Still, Pauline was now a _grande dame_ indeed, who could real y afford to patronise even Napoleon's wife. Her Court was more splendid than that of Josephine. She had lovers by the score--from Blanguini, who composed his most exquisite songs to sing for her ears alone, to Forbin, her artist Chamberlain, whose brushes she inspired in a hundred paintings of her lovely self in as many unconventional guises. Her caskets of jewels were matched by the most wonderful col ection of dresses in France, the richest and daintiest confections, from pearl embroidered ball-gowns which cost twenty thousand francs to the mauve and silver in which she went a-hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau. At Petit Trianon and in the Faubourg St Honore, she had palaces that were dreams of beauty and luxury. The only thorn in her bed of roses was, in fact, her husband, the Prince, the very sight of whom was sufficient to spoil a day for her.
When, at Napoleon's bidding, she accompanied Borghese to his Governorship beyond the Alps, she took in her train seven wagon-loads of finery. At Turin she held the Court of a Queen, to which the Prince was only admitted on sufferance. Royal visits, dinners, dances, receptions fol owed one another in dazzling succession; behind her chair, at dinner or reception, always stood two gigantic negroes, crowned with ostrich plumes. She was now "sister of the Emperor," and all the world should know it!
If only she could escape from her detested husband she would be the happiest woman on earth. But Napoleon on this point was adamant. In her rage and rebellion she tore her hair, rol ed on the floor, took drugs to make her ill; and at last so succeeded in alarming her Imperial brother that he summoned her back to France, where her army of lovers gave her a warm welcome, and where she could indulge in any vanity and fol y unchecked.
Matters were now hastening to a tragic climax for Napoleon and the family he had raised from slumdom in Marseilles to crowns and coronets.
Josephine had been divorced, to Pauline's undisguised joy; and her place had been taken by Marie Louise, the proud Austrian, whom she liked at least as little. When Napoleon fel from his throne, she alone of all his sisters helped to cheer his exile in Elba; for the brother she loved and feared was the only man to whom Pauline's fickle heart was ever true. She even stripped herself of al her jewels to make the way smooth back to his crown. And when at last news came to her at Rome of his death at St Helena it was she who shed the bitterest tears and refused to be comforted. That an empire was lost, was nothing compared with the loss of the brother who had always been so lenient to her failings, so responsive to her love.
Two years later her own end came at Florence. When she felt the cold hand of death on her, she called feebly for a mirror, that she might look for the last time on her beauty. "Thank God," she whispered, as she gazed, "I am still lovely! I am ready to die." A few moments later, with the mirror still clutched in her hand, and her eyes still feasting on the charms which time and death itself were powerless to dim, died Pauline Bonaparte, sister of an Emperor and herself an Empress by the right of her incomparable beauty.