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Title: Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Vol 1-
4, Complete

Author: Lyndon Orr

Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #4693]
Most recently updated: February 6, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS
AFFINITIES OF HISTORY: THE ROMANCE OF DEVOTION. VOL 1-4,
COMPLETE ***

FAMOUS AFFINITIES OF
HISTORY

THE ROMANCE OF DEVOTION

Volumes 1-4, Complete

By Lyndon Orr

CONTENTS

THE STORY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
ABELARD AND HELOISE
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF
LEICESTER
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD
BOTHWELL
QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN AND THE
MARQUIS MONALDESCHI
KING CHARLES II. AND NELL GWYN
MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE
LECOUVREUR
THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD
STUART
THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE
POTEMKIN
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
THE STORY OF AARON BURR

GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE
AND COUNT NEIPPERG
THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON
LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF
BAVARIA
LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON
LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY
BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL
THE STORY OF KARL MARX
FERDINAND LASSALLE AND HELENE VON
DONNIGES
THE STORY OF RACHEL
DEAN SWIFT AND THE TWO ESTHERS
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN
THE STORY OF THE CARLYLES
THE STORY OF THE HUGOS
THE STORY OF GEORGE SAND
THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS
HONORE DE BALZAC AND EVELINA HANSKA

CHARLES READE AND LAURA SEYMOUR

THE STORY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Of all love stories that are known to human history, the love story of
Antony and Cleopatra has been for nineteen centuries the most remarkable.
It has tasked the resources of the plastic and the graphic arts. It has been
made the theme of poets and of prose narrators. It has appeared and
reappeared in a thousand forms, and it appeals as much to the imagination
to-day as it did when Antony deserted his almost victorious troops and
hastened in a swift galley from Actium in pursuit of Cleopatra.
The wonder of the story is explained by its extraordinary nature. Many
men in private life have lost fortune and fame for the love of woman. Kings
have incurred the odium of their people, and have cared nothing for it in
comparison with the joys of sense that come from the lingering caresses and
clinging kisses. Cold-blooded statesmen, such as Parnell, have lost the
leadership of their party and have gone down in history with a clouded
name because of the fascination exercised upon them by some woman,
often far from beautiful, and yet possessing the mysterious power which
makes the triumphs of statesmanship seem slight in comparison with the
swiftly flying hours of pleasure.
But in the case of Antony and Cleopatra alone do we find a man flinging
away not merely the triumphs of civic honors or the headship of a state, but
much more than these—the mastery of what was practically the world—in
answer to the promptings of a woman's will. Hence the story of the Roman
triumvir and the Egyptian queen is not like any other story that has yet been
told. The sacrifice involved in it was so overwhelming, so instantaneous,
and so complete as to set this narrative above all others. Shakespeare's
genius has touched it with the glory of a great imagination. Dryden, using it
in the finest of his plays, expressed its nature in the title "All for Love."
The distinguished Italian historian, Signor Ferrero, the author of many
books, has tried hard to eliminate nearly all the romantic elements from the
tale, and to have us see in it not the triumph of love, but the blindness of
ambition. Under his handling it becomes almost a sordid drama of man's
pursuit of power and of woman's selfishness. Let us review the story as it
remains, even after we have taken full account of Ferrero's criticism. Has

the world for nineteen hundred years been blinded by a show of sentiment?
Has it so absolutely been misled by those who lived and wrote in the days
which followed closely on the events that make up this extraordinary
narrative?
In answering these questions we must consider, in the first place, the
scene, and, in the second place, the psychology of the two central characters
who for so long a time have been regarded as the very embodiment of
unchecked passion.
As to the scene, it must be remembered that the Egypt of those days was
not Egyptian as we understand the word, but rather Greek. Cleopatra herself
was of Greek descent. The kingdom of Egypt had been created by a general
of Alexander the Great after that splendid warrior's death. Its capital, the
most brilliant city of the Greco-Roman world, had been founded by
Alexander himself, who gave to it his name. With his own hands he traced
out the limits of the city and issued the most peremptory orders that it
should be made the metropolis of the entire world. The orders of a king
cannot give enduring greatness to a city; but Alexander's keen eye and
marvelous brain saw at once that the site of Alexandria was such that a
great commercial community planted there would live and flourish
throughout out succeeding ages. He was right; for within a century this new
capital of Egypt leaped to the forefront among the exchanges of the world's
commerce, while everything that art could do was lavished on its
embellishment.
Alexandria lay upon a projecting tongue of land so situated that the
whole trade of the Mediterranean centered there. Down the Nile there
floated to its gates the barbaric wealth of Africa. To it came the treasures of
the East, brought from afar by caravans—silks from China, spices and
pearls from India, and enormous masses of gold and silver from lands
scarcely known. In its harbor were the vessels of every country, from Asia
in the East to Spain and Gaul and even Britain in the West.
When Cleopatra, a young girl of seventeen, succeeded to the throne of
Egypt the population of Alexandria amounted to a million souls. The
customs duties collected at the port would, in terms of modern money,
amount each year to more than thirty million dollars, even though the
imposts were not heavy. The people, who may be described as Greek at the
top and Oriental at the bottom, were boisterous and pleasure-loving,

devoted to splendid spectacles, with horse-racing, gambling, and
dissipation; yet at the same time they were an artistic people, loving music
passionately, and by no means idle, since one part of the city was devoted to
large and prosperous manufactories of linen, paper, glass, and muslin.
To the outward eye Alexandria was extremely beautiful. Through its
entire length ran two great boulevards, shaded and diversified by mighty
trees and parterres of multicolored flowers, amid which fountains plashed
and costly marbles gleamed. One-fifth of the whole city was known as the
Royal Residence. In it were the palaces of the reigning family, the great
museum, and the famous library which the Arabs later burned. There were
parks and gardens brilliant with tropical foliage and adorned with the
masterpieces of Grecian sculpture, while sphinxes and obelisks gave a
suggestion of Oriental strangeness. As one looked seaward his eye beheld
over the blue water the snow-white rocks of the sheltering island, Pharos,
on which was reared a lighthouse four hundred feet in height and justly
numbered among the seven wonders of the world. Altogether, Alexandria
was a city of wealth, of beauty, of stirring life, of excitement, and of
pleasure. Ferrero has aptly likened it to Paris—not so much the Paris of to-
day as the Paris of forty years ago, when the Second Empire flourished in
all its splendor as the home of joy and strange delights.
Over the country of which Alexandria was the capital Cleopatra came to
reign at seventeen. Following the odd custom which the Greek dynasty of
the Ptolemies had inherited from their Egyptian predecessors, she was
betrothed to her own brother. He, however, was a mere child of less than
twelve, and was under the control of evil counselors, who, in his name,
gained control of the capital and drove Cleopatra into exile. Until then she
had been a mere girl; but now the spirit of a woman who was wronged
blazed up in her and called out all her latent powers. Hastening to Syria, she
gathered about herself an army and led it against her foes.
But meanwhile Julius Caesar, the greatest man of ancient times, had
arrived at Alexandria backed by an army of his veterans. Against him no
resistance would avail. Then came a brief moment during which the
Egyptian king and the Egyptian queen each strove to win the favor of the
Roman imperator. The king and his advisers had many arts, and so had
Cleopatra. One thing, however, she possessed which struck the balance in
her favor, and this was a woman's fascination.

According to the story, Caesar was unwilling to receive her. There came
into his presence, as he sat in the palace, a group of slaves bearing a long
roll of matting, bound carefully and seeming to contain some precious work
of art. The slaves made signs that they were bearing a gift to Caesar. The
master of Egypt bade them unwrap the gift that he might see it. They did so,
and out of the wrapping came Cleopatra—a radiant vision, appealing,
irresistible. Next morning it became known everywhere that Cleopatra had
remained in Caesar's quarters through the night and that her enemies were
now his enemies. In desperation they rushed upon his legions, casting aside
all pretense of amity. There ensued a fierce contest, but the revolt was
quenched in blood.
This was a crucial moment in Cleopatra's life. She had sacrificed all that
a woman has to give; but she had not done so from any love of pleasure or
from wantonness. She was queen of Egypt, and she had redeemed her
kingdom and kept it by her sacrifice. One should not condemn her too
severely. In a sense, her act was one of heroism like that of Judith in the tent
of Holofernes. But beyond all question it changed her character. It taught
her the secret of her own great power. Henceforth she was no longer a mere
girl, nor a woman of the ordinary type. Her contact with so great a mind as
Caesar's quickened her intellect. Her knowledge that, by the charms of
sense, she had mastered even him transformed her into a strange and
wonderful creature. She learned to study the weaknesses of men, to play on
their emotions, to appeal to every subtle taste and fancy. In her were
blended mental power and that illusive, indefinable gift which is called
charm.
For Cleopatra was never beautiful. Signor Ferrero seems to think this fact
to be discovery of his own, but it was set down by Plutarch in a very
striking passage written less than a century after Cleopatra and Antony died.
We may quote here what the Greek historian said of her:
Her actual beauty was far from being so remarkable that none could be
compared with her, nor was it such that it would strike your fancy when you
saw her first. Yet the influence of her presence, if you lingered near her, was
irresistible. Her attractive personality, joined with the charm of her
conversation, and the individual touch that she gave to everything she said
or did, were utterly bewitching. It was delightful merely to hear the music

of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass
from one language to another.
Caesar had left Cleopatra firmly seated on the throne of Egypt. For six
years she reigned with great intelligence, keeping order in her dominions,
and patronizing with discrimination both arts and letters. But ere long the
convulsions of the Roman state once more caused her extreme anxiety.
Caesar had been assassinated, and there ensued a period of civil war. Out of
it emerged two striking figures which were absolutely contrasted in their
character. One was Octavian, the adopted son of Caesar, a man who, though
still quite young and possessed of great ability, was cunning, cold-blooded,
and deceitful. The other was Antony, a soldier by training, and with all a
soldier's bluntness, courage, and lawlessness.
The Roman world was divided for the time between these two men,
Antony receiving the government of the East, Octavian that of the West. In
the year which had preceded this division Cleopatra had wavered between
the two opposite factions at Rome. In so doing she had excited the
suspicion of Antony, and he now demanded of her an explanation.
One must have some conception of Antony himself in order to
understand the events that followed. He was essentially a soldier, of
excellent family, being related to Caesar himself. As a very young man he
was exceedingly handsome, and bad companions led him into the pursuit of
vicious pleasure. He had scarcely come of age when he found that he owed
the enormous sum of two hundred and fifty talents, equivalent to half a
million dollars in the money of to-day. But he was much more than a mere
man of pleasure, given over to drinking and to dissipation. Men might tell
of his escapades, as when he drove about the streets of Rome in a common
cab, dangling his legs out of the window while he shouted forth drunken
songs of revelry. This was not the whole of Antony. Joining the Roman
army in Syria, he showed himself to be a soldier of great personal bravery, a
clever strategist, and also humane and merciful in the hour of victory.
Unlike most Romans, Antony wore a full beard. His forehead was large,
and his nose was of the distinctive Roman type. His look was so bold and
masculine that people likened him to Hercules. His democratic manners
endeared him to the army. He wore a plain tunic covered with a large,
coarse mantle, and carried a huge sword at his side, despising ostentation.
Even his faults and follies added to his popularity. He would sit down at the

common soldiers' mess and drink with them, telling them stories and
clapping them on the back. He spent money like water, quickly recognizing
any daring deed which his legionaries performed. In this respect he was like
Napoleon; and, like Napoleon, he had a vein of florid eloquence which was
criticized by literary men, but which went straight to the heart of the private
soldier. In a word, he was a powerful, virile, passionate, able man, rough, as
were nearly all his countrymen, but strong and true.
It was to this general that Cleopatra was to answer, and with a firm
reliance on the charms which had subdued Antony's great commander,
Caesar, she set out in person for Cilicia, in Asia Minor, sailing up the river
Cydnus to the place where Antony was encamped with his army. Making all
allowance for the exaggeration of historians, there can be no doubt that she
appeared to him like some dreamy vision. Her barge was gilded, and was
wafted on its way by swelling sails of Tyrian purple. The oars which smote
the water were of shining silver. As she drew near the Roman general's
camp the languorous music of flutes and harps breathed forth a strain of
invitation.
Cleopatra herself lay upon a divan set upon the deck of the barge beneath
a canopy of woven gold. She was dressed to resemble Venus, while girls
about her personated nymphs and Graces. Delicate perfumes diffused
themselves from the vessel; and at last, as she drew near the shore, all the
people for miles about were gathered there, leaving Antony to sit alone in
the tribunal where he was dispensing justice.
Word was brought to him that Venus had come to feast with Bacchus.
Antony, though still suspicious of Cleopatra, sent her an invitation to dine
with him in state. With graceful tact she sent him a counter-invitation, and
he came. The magnificence of his reception dazzled the man who had so
long known only a soldier's fare, or at most the crude entertainments which
he had enjoyed in Rome. A marvelous display of lights was made.
Thousands upon thousands of candles shone brilliantly, arranged in squares
and circles; while the banquet itself was one that symbolized the studied
luxury of the East.
At this time Cleopatra was twenty-seven years of age—a period of life
which modern physiologists have called the crisis in a woman's growth. She
had never really loved before, since she had given herself to Caesar, not
because she cared for him, but to save her kingdom. She now came into the

presence of one whose manly beauty and strong passions were matched by
her own subtlety and appealing charm.
When Antony addressed her he felt himself a rustic in her presence.
Almost resentful, he betook himself to the coarse language of the camp.
Cleopatra, with marvelous adaptability, took her tone from his, and thus in a
moment put him at his ease. Ferrero, who takes a most unfavorable view of
her character and personality, nevertheless explains the secret of her
fascination:
Herself utterly cold and callous, insensitive by nature to the flame of true
devotion, Cleopatra was one of those women gifted with an unerring
instinct for all the various roads to men's affections. She could be the
shrinking, modest girl, too shy to reveal her half-unconscious emotions of
jealousy and depression and self-abandonment, or a woman carried away by
the sweep of a fiery and uncontrollable passion. She could tickle the
esthetic sensibilities of her victims by rich and gorgeous festivals, by the
fantastic adornment of her own person and her palace, or by brilliant
discussions on literature and art; she could conjure up all their grossest
instincts with the vilest obscenities of conversation, with the free and easy
jocularity of a woman of the camps.
These last words are far too strong, and they represent only Ferrero's
personal opinion; yet there is no doubt that she met every mood of Antony's
so that he became enthralled with her at once. No such woman as this had
ever cast her eyes on him before. He had a wife at home—a most
disreputable wife—so that he cared little for domestic ties. Later, out of
policy, he made another marriage with the sister of his rival, Octavian, but
this wife he never cared for. His heart and soul were given up to Cleopatra,
the woman who could be a comrade in the camp and a fount of tenderness
in their hours of dalliance, and who possessed the keen intellect of a man
joined to the arts and fascinations of a woman.
On her side she found in Antony an ardent lover, a man of vigorous
masculinity, and, moreover, a soldier whose armies might well sustain her
on the throne of Egypt. That there was calculation mingled with her love,
no one can doubt. That some calculation also entered into Antony's
affection is likewise certain. Yet this does not affect the truth that each was
wholly given to the other. Why should it have lessened her love for him to
feel that he could protect her and defend her? Why should it have lessened

his love for her to know that she was queen of the richest country in the
world—one that could supply his needs, sustain his armies, and gild his
triumphs with magnificence?
There are many instances in history of regnant queens who loved and yet
whose love was not dissociated from the policy of state. Such were Anne of
Austria, Elizabeth of England, and the unfortunate Mary Stuart. Such, too,
we cannot fail to think, was Cleopatra.
The two remained together for ten years. In this time Antony was
separated from her only during a campaign in the East. In Alexandria he
ceased to seem a Roman citizen and gave himself up wholly to the charms
of this enticing woman. Many stories are told of their good fellowship and
close intimacy. Plutarch quotes Plato as saying that there are four kinds of
flattery, but he adds that Cleopatra had a thousand. She was the supreme
mistress of the art of pleasing.
Whether Antony were serious or mirthful, she had at the instant some
new delight or some new charm to meet his wishes. At every turn she was
with him both day and night. With him she threw dice; with him she drank;
with him she hunted; and when he exercised himself in arms she was there
to admire and applaud.
At night the pair would disguise themselves as servants and wander about
the streets of Alexandria. In fact, more than once they were set upon in the
slums and treated roughly by the rabble who did not recognize them.
Cleopatra was always alluring, always tactful, often humorous, and full of
frolic.
Then came the shock of Antony's final breach with Octavian. Either
Antony or his rival must rule the world. Cleopatra's lover once more
became the Roman general, and with a great fleet proceeded to the coast of
Greece, where his enemy was encamped. Antony had raised a hundred and
twelve thousand troops and five hundred ships—a force far superior to that
commanded by Octavian. Cleopatra was there with sixty ships.
In the days that preceded the final battle much took place which still
remains obscure. It seems likely that Antony desired to become again the
Roman, while Cleopatra wished him to thrust Rome aside and return to
Egypt with her, to reign there as an independent king. To her Rome was
almost a barbarian city. In it she could not hold sway as she could in her
beautiful Alexandria, with its blue skies and velvet turf and tropical flowers.

At Rome Antony would be distracted by the cares of state, and she would
lose her lover. At Alexandria she would have him for her very own.
The clash came when the hostile fleets met off the promontory of
Actium. At its crisis Cleopatra, prematurely concluding that the battle was
lost, of a sudden gave the signal for retreat and put out to sea with her fleet.
This was the crucial moment. Antony, mastered by his love, forgot all else,
and in a swift ship started in pursuit of her, abandoning his fleet and army to
win or lose as fortune might decide. For him the world was nothing; the
dark-browed Queen of Egypt, imperious and yet caressing, was everything.
Never was such a prize and never were such great hopes thrown carelessly
away. After waiting seven days Antony's troops, still undefeated, finding
that their commander would not return to them, surrendered to Octavian,
who thus became the master of an empire.
Later his legions assaulted Alexandria, and there Antony was twice
defeated. At last Cleopatra saw her great mistake. She had made her lover
give up the hope of being Rome's dictator, but in so doing she had also lost
the chance of ruling with him tranquilly in Egypt. She shut herself behind
the barred doors of the royal sepulcher; and, lest she should be molested
there, she sent forth word that she had died. Her proud spirit could not
brook the thought that she might be seized and carried as a prisoner to
Rome. She was too much a queen in soul to be led in triumph up the Sacred
Way to the Capitol with golden chains clanking on her slender wrists.
Antony, believing the report that she was dead, fell upon his sword; but
in his dying moments he was carried into the presence of the woman for
whom he had given all. With her arms about him, his spirit passed away;
and soon after she, too, met death, whether by a poisoned draught or by the
storied asp no one can say.
Cleopatra had lived the mistress of a splendid kingdom. She had
successively captivated two of the greatest men whom Rome had ever seen.
She died, like a queen, to escape disgrace. Whatever modern critics may
have to say concerning small details, this story still remains the strangest
love story of which the world has any record.

ABELARD AND HELOISE
Many a woman, amid the transports of passionate and languishing love,
has cried out in a sort of ecstasy:
"I love you as no woman ever loved a man before!"
When she says this she believes it. Her whole soul is aflame with the
ardor of emotion. It really seems to her that no one ever could have loved so
much as she.
This cry—spontaneous, untaught, sincere—has become almost one of
those conventionalities of amorous expression which belong to the
vocabulary of self-abandonment. Every woman who utters it, when torn by
the almost terrible extravagance of a great love, believes that no one before
her has ever said it, and that in her own case it is absolutely true.
Yet, how many women are really faithful to the end? Very many, indeed,
if circumstances admit of easy faithfulness. A high-souled, generous, ardent
nature will endure an infinity of disillusionment, of misfortune, of neglect,
and even of ill treatment. Even so, the flame, though it may sink low, can be
revived again to burn as brightly as before. But in order that this may be so
it is necessary that the object of such a wonderful devotion be alive, that he
be present and visible; or, if he be absent, that there should still exist some
hope of renewing the exquisite intimacy of the past.
A man who is sincerely loved may be compelled to take long journeys
which will separate him for an indefinite time from the woman who has
given her heart to him, and she will still be constant. He may be imprisoned,
perhaps for life, yet there is always the hope of his release or of his escape;
and some women will be faithful to him and will watch for his return. But,
given a situation which absolutely bars out hope, which sunders two souls
in such a way that they can never be united in this world, and there we have
a test so terribly severe that few even of the most loyal and intensely
clinging lovers can endure it.
Not that such a situation would lead a woman to turn to any other man
than the one to whom she had given her very life; but we might expect that
at least her strong desire would cool and weaken. She might cherish his

memory among the precious souvenirs of her love life; but that she should
still pour out the same rapturous, unstinted passion as before seems almost
too much to believe. The annals of emotion record only one such instance;
and so this instance has become known to all, and has been cherished for
nearly a thousand years. It involves the story of a woman who did love,
perhaps, as no one ever loved before or since; for she was subjected to this
cruel test, and she met the test not alone completely, but triumphantly and
almost fiercely.
The story is, of course, the story of Abelard and Heloise. It has many
times been falsely told. Portions of it have been omitted, and other portions
of it have been garbled. A whole literature has grown up around the subject.
It may well be worth our while to clear away the ambiguities and the
doubtful points, and once more to tell it simply, without bias, and with a
strict adherence to what seems to be the truth attested by authentic records.
There is one circumstance connected with the story which we must
specially note. The narrative does something more than set forth the one
quite unimpeachable instance of unconquered constancy. It shows how, in
the last analysis, that which touches the human heart has more vitality and
more enduring interest than what concerns the intellect or those
achievements of the human mind which are external to our emotional
nature.
Pierre Abelard was undoubtedly the boldest and most creative reasoner of
his time. As a wandering teacher he drew after him thousands of
enthusiastic students. He gave a strong impetus to learning. He was a
marvelous logician and an accomplished orator. Among his pupils were
men who afterward became prelates of the church and distinguished
scholars. In the Dark Age, when the dictates of reason were almost wholly
disregarded, he fought fearlessly for intellectual freedom. He was
practically the founder of the University of Paris, which in turn became the
mother of medieval and modern universities.
He was, therefore, a great and striking figure in the history of civilization.
Nevertheless he would to-day be remembered only by scholars and students
of the Middle Ages were it not for the fact that he inspired the most
enduring love that history records. If Heloise had never loved him, and if
their story had not been so tragic and so poignant, he would be to-day only
a name known to but a few. His final resting-place, in the cemetery of Pere

Lachaise, in Paris, would not be sought out by thousands every year and
kept bright with flowers, the gift of those who have themselves both loved
and suffered.
Pierre Abelard—or, more fully, Pierre Abelard de Palais—was a native of
Brittany, born in the year 1079. His father was a knight, the lord of the
manor; but Abelard cared little for the life of a petty noble; and so he gave
up his seigniorial rights to his brothers and went forth to become, first of all
a student, and then a public lecturer and teacher.
His student days ended abruptly in Paris, where he had enrolled himself
as the pupil of a distinguished philosopher, Guillaume de Champeaux; but
one day Abelard engaged in a disputation with his master. His wonderful
combination of eloquence, logic, and originality utterly routed Champeaux,
who was thus humiliated in the presence of his disciples. He was the first of
many enemies that Abelard was destined to make in his long and stormy
career. From that moment the young Breton himself set up as a teacher of
philosophy, and the brilliancy of his discourses soon drew to him throngs of
students from all over Europe.
Before proceeding with the story of Abelard it is well to reconstruct,
however slightly, a picture of the times in which he lived. It was an age
when Western Europe was but partly civilized. Pedantry and learning of the
most minute sort existed side by side with the most violent excesses of
medieval barbarism. The Church had undertaken the gigantic task of
subduing and enlightening the semi-pagan peoples of France and Germany
and England.
When we look back at that period some will unjustly censure Rome for
not controlling more completely the savagery of the medievals. More fairly
should we wonder at the great measure of success which had already been
achieved. The leaven of a true Christianity was working in the half-pagan
populations. It had not yet completely reached the nobles and the knights,
or even all the ecclesiastics who served it and who were consecrated to its
mission. Thus, amid a sort of political chaos were seen the glaring evils of
feudalism. Kings and princes and their followers lived the lives of swine.
Private blood-feuds were regarded lightly. There was as yet no single
central power. Every man carried his life in his hand, trusting to sword and
dagger for protection.

The cities were still mere hamlets clustered around great castles or
fortified cathedrals. In Paris itself the network of dark lanes, ill lighted and
unguarded, was the scene of midnight murder and assassination. In the
winter-time wolves infested the town by night. Men-at-arms, with torches
and spears, often had to march out from their barracks to assail the snarling,
yelping packs of savage animals that hunger drove from the surrounding
forests.
Paris of the twelfth century was typical of France itself, which was
harried by human wolves intent on rapine and wanton plunder. There were
great schools of theology, but the students who attended them fought and
slashed one another. If a man's life was threatened he must protect it by his
own strength or by gathering about him a band of friends. No one was safe.
No one was tolerant. Very few were free from the grosser vices. Even in
some of the religious houses the brothers would meet at night for unseemly
revels, splashing the stone floors with wine and shrieking in a delirium of
drunkenness. The rules of the Church enjoined temperance, continence, and
celibacy; but the decrees of Leo IX. and Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and
Gregory were only partially observed.
In fact, Europe was in a state of chaos—political and moral and social.
Only very slowly was order emerging from sheer anarchy. We must
remember this when we recall some facts which meet us in the story of
Abelard and Heloise.
The jealousy of Champeaux drove Abelard for a time from Paris. He
taught and lectured at several other centers of learning, always admired, and
yet at the same time denounced by many for his advocacy of reason as
against blind faith. During the years of his wandering he came to have a
wide knowledge of the world and of human nature. If we try to imagine him
as he was in his thirty-fifth year we shall find in him a remarkable
combination of attractive qualities.
It must be remembered that though, in a sense, he was an ecclesiastic, he
had not yet been ordained to the priesthood, but was rather a canon—a
person who did not belong to any religious order, though he was supposed
to live according to a definite set of religious rules and as a member of a
religious community. Abelard, however, made rather light of his churchly
associations. He was at once an accomplished man of the world and a
profound scholar. There was nothing of the recluse about him. He mingled

with his fellow men, whom he dominated by the charm of his personality.
He was eloquent, ardent, and persuasive. He could turn a delicate
compliment as skilfully as he could elaborate a syllogism. His rich voice
had in it a seductive quality which was never without its effect.
Handsome and well formed, he possessed as much vigor of body as of
mind. Nor were his accomplishments entirely those of the scholar. He wrote
dainty verses, which he also set to music, and which he sang himself with a
rare skill. Some have called him "the first of the troubadours," and many
who cared nothing for his skill in logic admired him for his gifts as a
musician and a poet. Altogether, he was one to attract attention wherever he
went, for none could fail to recognize his power.
It was soon after his thirty-fifth year that he returned to Paris, where he
was welcomed by thousands. With much tact he reconciled himself to his
enemies, so that his life now seemed to be full of promise and of sunshine.
It was at this time that he became acquainted with a very beautiful young
girl named Heloise. She was only eighteen years of age, yet already she
possessed not only beauty, but many accomplishments which were then
quite rare in women, since she both wrote and spoke a number of
languages, and, like Abelard, was a lover of music and poetry. Heloise was
the illegitimate daughter of a canon of patrician blood; so that she is said to
have been a worthy representative of the noble house of the Montmorencys
—famous throughout French history for chivalry and charm.
Up to this time we do not know precisely what sort of life Abelard had
lived in private. His enemies declared that he had squandered his substance
in vicious ways. His friends denied this, and represented him as strict and
chaste. The truth probably lies between these two assertions. He was
naturally a pleasure-loving man of the world, who may very possibly have
relieved his severer studies by occasional revelry and light love. It is not at
all likely that he was addicted to gross passions and low practices.
But such as he was, when he first saw Heloise he conceived for her a
violent attachment. Carefully guarded in the house of her uncle, Fulbert, it
was difficult at first for Abelard to meet her save in the most casual way;
yet every time that he heard her exquisite voice and watched her graceful
manners he became more and more infatuated. His studies suddenly seemed
tame and colorless beside the fierce scarlet flame which blazed up in his
heart.

Nevertheless, it was because of these studies and of his great reputation
as a scholar that he managed to obtain access to Heloise. He flattered her
uncle and made a chance proposal that he should himself become an inmate
of Fulbert's household in order that he might teach this girl of so much
promise. Such an offer coming from so brilliant a man was joyfully
accepted.
From that time Abelard could visit Heloise without restraint. He was her
teacher, and the two spent hours together, nominally in the study of Greek
and Hebrew; but doubtless very little was said between them upon such
unattractive subjects. On the contrary, with all his wide experience of life,
his eloquence, his perfect manners, and his fascination, Abelard put forth
his power to captivate the senses of a girl still in her teens and quite
ignorant of the world. As Remusat says, he employed to win her the genius
which had overwhelmed all the great centers of learning in the Western
world.
It was then that the pleasures of knowledge, the joys of thought, the
emotions of eloquence, were all called into play to charm and move and
plunge into a profound and strange intoxication this noble and tender heart
which had never known either love or sorrow.... One can imagine that
everything helped on the inevitable end. Their studies gave them
opportunities to see each other freely, and also permitted them to be alone
together. Then their books lay open between them; but either long periods
of silence stilled their reading, or else words of deepening intimacy made
them forget their studies altogether. The eyes of the two lovers turned from
the book to mingle their glances, and then to turn away in a confusion that
was conscious.
Hand would touch hand, apparently by accident; and when conversation
ceased, Abelard would often hear the long, quivering sigh which showed
the strange, half-frightened, and yet exquisite joy which Heloise
experienced.
It was not long before the girl's heart had been wholly won. Transported
by her emotion, she met the caresses of her lover with those as unrestrained
as his. Her very innocence deprived her of the protection which older
women would have had. All was given freely, and even wildly, by Heloise;
and all was taken by Abelard, who afterward himself declared:

"The pleasure of teaching her to love surpassed the delightful fragrance
of all the perfumes in the world."
Yet these two could not always live in a paradise which was entirely their
own. The world of Paris took notice of their close association. Some poems
written to Heloise by Abelard, as if in letters of fire, were found and shown
to Fulbert, who, until this time, had suspected nothing. Angrily he ordered
Abelard to leave his house. He forbade his niece to see her lover any more.
But the two could not be separated; and, indeed, there was good reason
why they should still cling together. Secretly Heloise left her uncle's house
and fled through the narrow lanes of Paris to the dwelling of Abelard's
sister, Denyse, where Abelard himself was living. There, presently, the
young girl gave birth to a son, who was named Astrolabe, after an
instrument used by astronomers, since both the father and the mother felt
that the offspring of so great a love should have no ordinary name.
Fulbert was furious, and rightly so. His hospitality had been outraged and
his niece dishonored. He insisted that the pair should at once be married.
Here was revealed a certain weakness in the character of Abelard. He
consented to the marriage, but insisted that it should be kept an utter secret.
Oddly enough, it was Heloise herself who objected to becoming the wife
of the man she loved. Unselfishness could go no farther. She saw that, were
he to marry her, his advancement in the Church would be almost
impossible; for, while the very minor clergy sometimes married in spite of
the papal bulls, matrimony was becoming a fatal bar to ecclesiastical
promotion. And so Heloise pleaded pitifully, both with her uncle and with
Abelard, that there should be no marriage. She would rather bear all manner
of disgrace than stand in the way of Abelard's advancement.
He has himself given some of the words in which she pleaded with him:
What glory shall I win from you, when I have made you quite inglorious
and have humbled both of us? What vengeance will the world inflict on me
if I deprive it of one so brilliant? What curses will follow such a marriage?
How outrageous would it be that you, whom nature created for the universal
good, should be devoted to one woman and plunged into such disgrace? I
loathe the thought of a marriage which would humiliate you.
Indeed, every possible effort which another woman in her place would
employ to make him marry her she used in order to dissuade him. Finally,
her sweet face streaming with tears, she uttered that tremendous sentence

which makes one really think that she loved him as no other woman ever
loved a man. She cried out, in an agony of self-sacrifice:
"I would rather be your mistress than the wife even of an emperor!"
Nevertheless, the two were married, and Abelard returned to his lecture-
room and to his studies. For months they met but seldom. Meanwhile,
however, the taunts and innuendos directed against Heloise so irritated
Fulbert that he broke his promise of secrecy, and told his friends that
Abelard and Heloise were man and wife. They went to Heloise for
confirmation. Once more she showed in an extraordinary way the depth of
her devotion.
"I am no wife," she said. "It is not true that Abelard has married me. My
uncle merely tells you this to save my reputation."
They asked her whether she would swear to this; and, without a moment's
hesitation, this pure and noble woman took an oath upon the Scriptures that
there had been no marriage.
Fulbert was enraged by this. He ill-treated Heloise, and, furthermore, he
forbade Abelard to visit her. The girl, therefore, again left her uncle's house
and betook herself to a convent just outside of Paris, where she assumed the
habit of a nun as a disguise. There Abelard continued from time to time to
meet her.
When Fulbert heard of this he put his own interpretation on it. He
believed that Abelard intended to ignore the marriage altogether, and that
possibly he might even marry some other woman. In any case, he now
hated Abelard with all his heart; and he resolved to take a fearful and
unnatural vengeance which would at once prevent his enemy from making
any other marriage, while at the same time it would debar him from
ecclesiastical preferment.
To carry out his plot Fulbert first bribed a man who was the body-servant
of Abelard, watching at the door of his room each night. Then he hired the
services of four ruffians. After Abelard had retired and was deep in slumber
the treacherous valet unbarred the door. The hirelings of Fulbert entered and
fell upon the sleeping man. Three of them bound him fast, while the fourth,
with a razor, inflicted on him the most shameful mutilation that is possible.
Then, extinguishing the lights, the wretches slunk away and were lost in
darkness, leaving behind their victim bound to his couch, uttering cries of
torment and bathed in his own blood.

It is a shocking story, and yet it is intensely characteristic of the lawless
and barbarous era in which it happened. Early the next morning the news
flew rapidly through Paris. The city hummed like a bee-hive. Citizens and
students and ecclesiastics poured into the street and surrounded the house of
Abelard.
"Almost the entire city," says Fulques, as quoted by McCabe, "went
clamoring toward his house. Women wept as if each one had lost her
husband."
Unmanned though he was, Abelard still retained enough of the spirit of
his time to seek vengeance. He, in his turn, employed ruffians whom he set
upon the track of those who had assaulted him. The treacherous valet and
one of Fulbert's hirelings were run down, seized, and mutilated precisely as
Abelard had been; and their eyes were blinded. A third was lodged in
prison. Fulbert himself was accused before one of the Church courts, which
alone had power to punish an ecclesiastic, and all his goods were
confiscated.
But, meantime, how did it fare with Heloise? Her grief was greater than
his own, while her love and her devotion were absolutely undiminished. But
Abelard now showed a selfishness—and indeed, a meanness—far beyond
any that he had before exhibited. Heloise could no more be his wife. He
made it plain that he put no trust in her fidelity. He was unwilling that she
should live in the world while he could not; and so he told her sternly that
she must take the veil and bury herself for ever in a nunnery.
The pain and shame which she experienced at this came wholly from the
fact that evidently Abelard did not trust her. Long afterward she wrote:
God knows I should not have hesitated, at your command, to precede or
to follow you to hell itself!
It was his distrust that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for him was so
intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows; and in the
convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altar and assumed
the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on the black tunic of a
Benedictine monk and entered the Abbey of St. Denis.
It is unnecessary here to follow out all the details of the lives of Abelard
and Heloise after this heart-rendering scene. Abelard passed through many
years of strife and disappointment, and even of humiliation; for on one
occasion, just as he had silenced Guillaume de Champeaux, so he himself

was silenced and put to rout by Bernard of Clairvaux—"a frail, tense,
absorbed, dominant little man, whose face was white and worn with
suffering," but in whose eyes there was a light of supreme strength. Bernard
represented pure faith, as Abelard represented pure reason; and the two men
met before a great council to match their respective powers.
Bernard, with fiery eloquence, brought a charge of heresy against
Abelard in an oration which was like a charge of cavalry. When he had
concluded Abelard rose with an ashen face, stammered out a few words,
and sat down. He was condemned by the council, and his works were
ordered to be burned.
All his later life was one of misfortune, of humiliation, and even of
personal danger. The reckless monks whom he tried to rule rose fiercely
against him. His life was threatened. He betook himself to a desolate and
lonely place, where he built for himself a hut of reeds and rushes, hoping to
spend his final years in meditation. But there were many who had not
forgotten his ability as a teacher. These flocked by hundreds to the desert
place where he abode. His hut was surrounded by tents and rude hovels,
built by his scholars for their shelter.
Thus Abelard resumed his teaching, though in a very different frame of
mind. In time he built a structure of wood and stone, which he called the
Paraclete, some remains of which can still be seen.
All this time no word had passed between him and Heloise. But presently
Abelard wrote and gave to the world a curious and exceedingly frank book,
which he called The Story of My Misfortunes. A copy of it reached the
hands of Heloise, and she at once sent to Abelard the first of a series of
letters which have remained unique in the literature of love.
Ten years had passed, and yet the woman's heart was as faithful and as
full of yearning as on the day when the two had parted. It has been said that
the letters are not genuine, and they must be read with this assertion in
mind; yet it is difficult to believe that any one save Heloise herself could
have flung a human soul into such frankly passionate utterances, or that any
imitator could have done the work.
In her first letter, which was sent to Abelard written upon parchment, she
said:
At thy command I would change, not merely my costume, but my very
soul, so entirely art thou the sole possessor of my body and my spirit.

Never, God is my witness, never have I sought anything in thee but thyself;
I have sought thee, and not thy gifts. I have not looked to the marriage-bond
or dowry.
She begged him to write to her, and to lead her to God, as once he had led
her into the mysteries of pleasure. Abelard answered in a letter, friendly to
be sure, but formal—the letter of a priest to a cloistered nun. The opening
words of it are characteristic of the whole:
To Heloise, his sister in Christ, from Abelard, her brother in Him.
The letter was a long one, but throughout the whole of it the writer's tone
was cold and prudent. Its very coldness roused her soul to a passionate
revolt. Her second letter bursts forth in a sort of anguish:
How hast thou been able to frame such thoughts, dearest? How hast thou
found words to convey them? Oh, if I dared but call God cruel to me! Oh,
most wretched of all creatures that I am! So sweet did I find the pleasures of
our loving days that I cannot bring myself to reject them or to banish them
from my memory. Wheresoever I go, they thrust themselves upon my
vision, and rekindle the old desire.
But Abelard knew only too well that not in this life could there be
anything save spiritual love between himself and Heloise. He wrote to her
again and again, always in the same remote and unimpassioned way. He
tells her about the history of monasticism, and discusses with her matters of
theology and ethics; but he never writes one word to feed the flame that is
consuming her. The woman understood at last; and by degrees her letters
became as calm as his—suffused, however, with a tenderness and feeling
which showed that in her heart of hearts she was still entirely given to him.
After some years Abelard left his dwelling at the Paraclete, and there was
founded there a religious house of which Heloise became the abbess. All the
world respected her for her sweetness, her wisdom, and the purity of her
character. She made friends as easily as Abelard made enemies. Even
Bernard, who had overthrown her husband, sought out Heloise to ask for
her advice and counsel.
Abelard died while on his way to Rome, whither he was journeying in
order to undergo a penalty; and his body was brought back to the Paraclete,
where it was entombed. Over it for twenty-two years Heloise watched with
tender care; and when she died, her body was laid beside that of her lover.

To-day their bones are mingled as she would have desired them to be
mingled. The stones of their tomb in the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise
were brought from the ruins of the Paraclete, and above the sarcophagus are
two recumbent figures, the whole being the work of the artist Alexandra
Lenoir, who died in 1836. The figure representing Heloise is not, however,
an authentic likeness. The model for it was a lady belonging to a noble
family of France, and the figure itself was brought to Pere Lachaise from
the ancient College de Beauvais.
The letters of Heloise have been read and imitated throughout the whole
of the last nine centuries. Some have found in them the utterances of a
woman whose love of love was greater than her love of God and whose
intensity of passion nothing could subdue; and so these have condemned
her. But others, like Chateaubriand, have more truly seen in them a pure and
noble spirit to whom fate had been very cruel; and who was, after all,
writing to the man who had been her lawful husband.
Some of the most famous imitations of her letters are those in the ancient
poem entitled, "The Romance of the Rose," written by Jean de Meung, in
the thirteenth century; and in modern times her first letter was paraphrased
by Alexander Pope, and in French by Colardeau. There exist in English half
a dozen translations of them, with Abelard's replies. It is interesting to
remember that practically all the other writings of Abelard remained
unpublished and unedited until a very recent period. He was a remarkable
figure as a philosopher and scholar; but the world cares for him only
because he was loved by Heloise.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF
LEICESTER
History has many romantic stories to tell of the part which women have
played in determining the destinies of nations. Sometimes it is a woman's
beauty that causes the shifting of a province. Again it is another woman's
rich possessions that incite invasion and lead to bloody wars. Marriages or
dowries, or the refusal of marriages and the lack of dowries, inheritance
through an heiress, the failure of a male succession—in these and in many
other ways women have set their mark indelibly upon the trend of history.
However, if we look over these different events we shall find that it is not
so much the mere longing for a woman—the desire to have her as a queen
—that has seriously affected the annals of any nation. Kings, like ordinary
men, have paid their suit and then have ridden away repulsed, yet not
seriously dejected. Most royal marriages are made either to secure the
succession to a throne by a legitimate line of heirs or else to unite adjoining
states and make a powerful kingdom out of two that are less powerful. But,
as a rule, kings have found greater delight in some sheltered bower remote
from courts than in the castled halls and well-cared-for nooks where their
own wives and children have been reared with all the appurtenances of
legitimacy.
There are not many stories that hang persistently about the love-making
of a single woman. In the case of one or another we may find an episode or
two—something dashing, something spirited or striking, something brilliant
and exhilarating, or something sad. But for a woman's whole life to be spent
in courtship that meant nothing and that was only a clever aid to diplomacy
—this is surely an unusual and really wonderful thing.
It is the more unusual because the woman herself was not intended by
nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors and
counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as a pawn.
She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose temper
was quick to leap into the passion of a man.

In studying this phase of the long and interesting life of Elizabeth of
England we must notice several important facts. In the first place, she gave
herself, above all else, to the maintenance of England—not an England that
would be half Spanish or half French, or even partly Dutch and Flemish, but
the Merry England of tradition—the England that was one and undivided,
with its growing freedom of thought, its bows and bills, its nut-brown ale,
its sturdy yeomen, and its loyalty to crown and Parliament. She once said,
almost as in an agony:
"I love England more than anything!"
And one may really hold that this was true.
For England she schemed and planned. For England she gave up many of
her royal rights. For England she descended into depths of treachery. For
England she left herself on record as an arrant liar, false, perjured, yet
successful; and because of her success for England's sake her countrymen
will hold her in high remembrance, since her scheming and her falsehood
are the offenses that one pardons most readily in a woman.
In the second place, it must be remembered that Elizabeth's courtships
and pretended love-makings were almost always a part of her diplomacy.
When not a part of her diplomacy they were a mere appendage to her
vanity. To seem to be the flower of the English people, and to be surrounded
by the noblest, the bravest, and the most handsome cavaliers, not only of
her own kingdom, but of others—this was, indeed, a choice morsel of
which she was fond of tasting, even though it meant nothing beyond the
moment.
Finally, though at times she could be very cold, and though she made
herself still colder in order that she might play fast and loose with foreign
suitors who played fast and loose with her—the King of Spain, the Duc
d'Alencon, brother of the French king, with an Austrian archduke, with a
magnificent barbarian prince of Muscovy, with Eric of Sweden, or any
other Scandinavian suitor—she felt a woman's need for some nearer and
more tender association to which she might give freer play and in which she
might feel those deeper emotions without the danger that arises when love
is mingled with diplomacy.
Let us first consider a picture of the woman as she really was in order
that we may understand her triple nature—consummate mistress of every
art that statesmen know, and using at every moment her person as a lure; a

vain-glorious queen who seemed to be the prey of boundless vanity; and,
lastly, a woman who had all a woman's passion, and who could cast
suddenly aside the check and balance which restrained her before the public
gaze and could allow herself to give full play to the emotion that she
inherited from the king, her father, who was himself a marvel of fire and
impetuosity. That the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn should be a
gentle, timid maiden would be to make heredity a farce.
Elizabeth was about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the
throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given with
precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court, and the fact
that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less account than if there
had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate, when she ascended it, after
the deaths of her brother, King Edward VI., and her sister, Queen Mary, she
was a woman well trained both in intellect and in physical development.
Mr. Martin Hume, who loves to dwell upon the later years of Queen
Elizabeth, speaks rather bitterly of her as a "painted old harridan"; and such
she may well have seemed when, at nearly seventy years of age, she leered
and grinned a sort of skeleton smile at the handsome young courtiers who
pretended to see in her the queen of beauty and to be dying for love of her.
Yet, in her earlier years, when she was young and strong and impetuous,
she deserved far different words than these. The portrait of her by Zucchero,
which now hangs in Hampton Court, depicts her when she must have been
of more than middle age; and still the face is one of beauty, though it be a
strange and almost artificial beauty—one that draws, attracts, and, perhaps,
lures you on against your will.
It is interesting to compare this painting with the frank word-picture of a
certain German agent who was sent to England by his emperor, and who
seems to have been greatly fascinated by Queen Elizabeth. She was at that
time in the prime of her beauty and her power. Her complexion was of that
peculiar transparency which is seen only in the face of golden blondes. Her
figure was fine and graceful, and her wit an accomplishment that would
have made a woman of any rank or time remarkable. The German envoy
says:
She lives a life of such magnificence and feasting as can hardly be
imagined, and occupies a great portion of her time with balls, banquets,
hunting, and similar amusements, with the utmost possible display, but

nevertheless she insists upon far greater respect being shown her than was
exacted by Queen Mary. She summons Parliament, but lets them know that
her orders must be obeyed in any case.
If any one will look at the painting by Zucchero he will see how much is
made of Elizabeth's hands—a distinctive feature quite as noble with the
Tudors as is the "Hapsburg lip" among the descendants of the house of
Austria. These were ungloved, and were very long and white, and she
looked at them and played with them a great deal; and, indeed, they
justified the admiration with which they were regarded by her flatterers.
Such was the personal appearance of Elizabeth. When a young girl, we
have still more favorable opinions of her that were written by those who
had occasion to be near her. Not only do they record swift glimpses of her
person, but sometimes in a word or two they give an insight into certain
traits of mind which came out prominently in her later years.
It may, perhaps, be well to view her as a woman before we regard her
more fully as a queen. It has been said that Elizabeth inherited many of the
traits of her father—the boldness of spirit, the rapidity of decision, and, at
the same time, the fox-like craft which often showed itself when it was least
expected.
Henry had also, as is well known, a love of the other sex, which has
made his reign memorable. And yet it must be noted that while he loved
much, it was not loose love. Many a king of England, from Henry II. to
Charles II., has offended far more than Henry VIII. Where Henry loved, he
married; and it was the unfortunate result of these royal marriages that has
made him seem unduly fond of women. If, however, we examine each one
of the separate espousals we shall find that he did not enter into it lightly,
and that he broke it off unwillingly. His ardent temperament, therefore, was
checked by a certain rational or conventional propriety, so that he was by no
means a loose liver, as many would make him out to be.
We must remember this when we recall the charges that have been made
against Elizabeth, and the strange stories that were told of her tricks—by no
means seemly tricks—which she used to play with her guardian, Lord
Thomas Seymour. The antics she performed with him in her dressing-room
were made the subject of an official inquiry; yet it came out that while
Elizabeth was less than sixteen, and Lord Thomas was very much her
senior, his wife was with him on his visits to the chamber of the princess.

Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were also sent to question her, Tyrwhitt
had a keen mind and one well trained to cope with any other's wit in this
sort of cross-examination. Elizabeth was only a girl of fifteen, yet she was a
match for the accomplished courtier in diplomacy and quick retort. He was
sent down to worm out of her everything that she knew. Threats and flattery
and forged letters and false confessions were tried on her; but they were
tried in vain. She would tell nothing of importance. She denied everything.
She sulked, she cried, she availed herself of a woman's favorite defense in
suddenly attacking those who had attacked her. She brought counter charges
against Tyrwhitt, and put her enemies on their own defense. Not a
compromising word could they wring out of her.
She bitterly complained of the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs.
Ashley, and cried out:
"I have not so behaved that you need put more mistresses upon me!"
Altogether, she was too much for Sir Robert, and he was wise enough to
recognize her cleverness.
"She hath a very good wit," said he, shrewdly; "and nothing is to be
gotten of her except by great policy." And he added: "If I had to say my
fancy, I think it more meet that she should have two governesses than one."
Mr. Hume notes the fact that after the two servants of the princess had
been examined and had told nothing very serious they found that they had
been wise in remaining friends of the royal girl. No sooner had Elizabeth
become queen than she knighted the man Parry and made him treasurer of
the household, while Mrs. Ashley, the governess, was treated with great
consideration. Thus, very naturally, Mr. Hume says: "They had probably
kept back far more than they told."
Even Tyrwhitt believed that there was a secret compact between them,
for he said, quaintly: "They all sing one song, and she hath set the note for
them."
Soon after this her brother Edward's death brought to the throne her elder
sister, Mary, who has harshly become known as Bloody Mary. During this
time Elizabeth put aside her boldness, and became apparently a shy and
simple-minded virgin. Surrounded on every side by those who sought to
trap her, there was nothing in her bearing to make her seem the head of a
party or the young chief of a faction. Nothing could exceed her in
meekness. She spoke of her sister in the humblest terms. She exhibited no

signs of the Tudor animation that was in reality so strong a part of her
character.
But, coming to the throne, she threw away her modesty and brawled and
rioted with very little self-restraint. The people as a whole found little fault
with her. She reminded them of her father, the bluff King Hal; and even
those who criticized her did so only partially. They thought much better of
her than they had of her saturnine sister, the first Queen Mary.
The life of Elizabeth has been very oddly misunderstood, not so much for
the facts in it as for the manner in which these have been arranged and the
relation which they have to one another. We ought to recollect that this
woman did not live in a restricted sphere, that her life was not a short one,
and that it was crowded with incidents and full of vivid color. Some think of
her as living for a short period of time and speak of the great historical
characters who surrounded her as belonging to a single epoch. To them she
has one set of suitors all the time—the Duc d'Alencon, the King of
Denmark's brother, the Prince of Sweden, the russian potentate, the
archduke sending her sweet messages from Austria, the melancholy King of
Spain, together with a number of her own brilliant Englishmen—Sir
William Pickering, Sir Robert Dudley, Lord Darnley, the Earl of Essex, Sir
Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Of course, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth lived for nearly seventy years—
almost three-quarters of a century—and in that long time there came and
went both men and women, those whom she had used and cast aside, with
others whom she had also treated with gratitude, and who had died gladly
serving her. But through it all there was a continual change in her
environment, though not in her. The young soldier went to the battle-field
and died; the wise counselor gave her his advice, and she either took it or
cared nothing for it. She herself was a curious blending of forwardness and
folly, of wisdom and wantonness, of frivolity and unbridled fancy. But
through it all she loved her people, even though she often cheated them and
made them pay her taxes in the harsh old way that prevailed before there
was any right save the king's will.
At the same time, this was only by fits and starts, and on the whole she
served them well. Therefore, to most of them she was always the good
Queen Bess. What mattered it to the ditcher and yeoman, far from the court,

that the queen was said to dance in her nightdress and to swear like a
trooper?
It was, indeed, largely from these rustic sources that such stories were
scattered throughout England. Peasants thought them picturesque. More to
the point with them were peace and prosperity throughout the country, the
fact that law was administered with honesty and justice, and that England
was safe from her deadly enemies—the swarthy Spaniards and the
scheming French.
But, as I said, we must remember always that the Elizabeth of one period
was not the Elizabeth of another, and that the England of one period was not
the England of another. As one thinks of it, there is something wonderful in
the almost star-like way in which this girl flitted unharmed through a
thousand perils. Her own countrymen were at first divided against her; a
score of greedy, avaricious suitors sought her destruction, or at least her
hand to lead her to destruction; all the great powers of the Continent were
either demanding an alliance with England or threatening to dash England
down amid their own dissensions.
What had this girl to play off against such dangers? Only an undaunted
spirit, a scheming mind that knew no scruples, and finally her own person
and the fact that she was a woman, and, therefore, might give herself in
marriage and become the mother of a race of kings.
It was this last weapon, the weapon of her sex, that proved, perhaps, the
most powerful of all. By promising a marriage or by denying it, or by
neither promising nor denying but withholding it, she gave forth a thousand
wily intimations which kept those who surrounded her at bay until she had
made still another deft and skilful combination, escaping like some startled
creature to a new place of safety.
In 1583, when she was fifty years of age, she had reached a point when
her courtships and her pretended love-making were no longer necessary.
She had played Sweden against Denmark, and France against Spain, and the
Austrian archduke against the others, and many suitors in her own land
against the different factions which they headed. She might have sat herself
down to rest; for she could feel that her wisdom had led her up into a high
place, whence she might look down in peace and with assurance of the
tranquillity that she had won. Not yet had the great Armada rolled and

thundered toward the English shores. But she was certain that her land was
secure, compact, and safe.
It remains to see what were those amatory relations which she may be
said to have sincerely held. She had played at love-making with foreign
princes, because it was wise and, for the moment, best. She had played with
Englishmen of rank who aspired to her hand, because in that way she might
conciliate, at one time her Catholic and at another her Protestant subjects.
But what of the real and inward feeling of her heart, when she was not
thinking of political problems or the necessities of state!
This is an interesting question. One may at least seek the answer, hoping
thereby to solve one of the most interesting phases of this perplexing and
most remarkable woman.
It must be remembered that it was not a question of whether Elizabeth
desired marriage. She may have done so as involving a brilliant stroke of
policy. In this sense she may have wished to marry one of the two French
princes who were among her suitors. But even here she hesitated, and her
Parliament disapproved; for by this time England had become largely
Protestant. Again, had she married a French prince and had children,
England might have become an appanage of France.
There is no particular evidence that she had any feeling at all for her
Flemish, Austrian, or Russian suitors, while the Swede's pretensions were
the laughing-stock of the English court. So we may set aside this question
of marriage as having nothing to do with her emotional life. She did desire a
son, as was shown by her passionate outcry when she compared herself
with Mary of Scotland.
"The Queen of Scots has a bonny son, while I am but a barren stock!"
She was too wise to wed a subject; though, had she married at all, her
choice would doubtless have been an Englishman. In this respect, as in so
many others, she was like her father, who chose his numerous wives, with
the exception of the first, from among the English ladies of the court; just as
the showy Edward IV. was happy in marrying "Dame Elizabeth Woodville."
But what a king may do is by no means so easy for a queen; and a husband
is almost certain to assume an authority which makes him unpopular with
the subjects of his wife.
Hence, as said above, we must consider not so much whom she would
have liked to marry, but rather to whom her love went out spontaneously,

and not as a part of that amatory play which amused her from the time when
she frisked with Seymour down to the very last days, when she could no
longer move about, but when she still dabbled her cheeks with rouge and
powder and set her skeleton face amid a forest of ruffs.
There were many whom she cared for after a fashion. She would not let
Sir Walter Raleigh visit her American colonies, because she could not bear
to have him so long away from her. She had great moments of passion for
the Earl of Essex, though in the end she signed his death-warrant because
he was as dominant in spirit as the queen herself.
Readers of Sir Walter Scott's wonderfully picturesque novel, Kenilworth,
will note how he throws the strongest light upon Elizabeth's affection for
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Scott's historical instinct is united here
with a vein of psychology which goes deeper than is usual with him. We see
Elizabeth trying hard to share her favor equally between two nobles; but the
Earl of Essex fails to please her because he lacked those exquisite manners
which made Leicester so great a favorite with the fastidious queen.
Then, too, the story of Leicester's marriage with Amy Robsart is
something more than a myth, based upon an obscure legend and an ancient
ballad. The earl had had such a wife, and there were sinister stories about
the manner of her death. But it is Scott who invents the villainous Varney
and the bulldog Anthony Foster; just as he brought the whole episode into
the foreground and made it occur at a period much later than was
historically true. Still, Scott felt—and he was imbued with the spirit and
knowledge of that time—a strong conviction that Elizabeth loved Leicester
as she really loved no one else.
There is one interesting fact which goes far to convince us. Just as her
father was, in a way, polygamous, so Elizabeth was even more truly
polyandrous. It was inevitable that she should surround herself with
attractive men, whose love-locks she would caress and whose flatteries she
would greedily accept. To the outward eye there was very little difference in
her treatment of the handsome and daring nobles of her court; yet a
historian of her time makes one very shrewd remark when he says: "To
every one she gave some power at times—to all save Leicester."
Cecil and Walsingham in counsel and Essex and Raleigh in the field
might have their own way at times, and even share the sovereign's power,
but to Leicester she intrusted no high commands and no important mission.

Why so? Simply because she loved him more than any of the rest; and,
knowing this, she knew that if besides her love she granted him any
measure of control or power, then she would be but half a queen and would
be led either to marry him or else to let him sway her as he would.
For the reason given, one may say with confidence that, while Elizabeth's
light loves were fleeting, she gave a deep affection to this handsome, bold,
and brilliant Englishman and cherished him in a far different way from any
of the others. This was as near as she ever came to marriage, and it was this
love at least which makes Shakespeare's famous line as false as it is
beautiful, when he describes "the imperial votaress" as passing by "in
maiden meditation, fancy free."

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD
BOTHWELL
Mary Stuart and Cleopatra are the two women who have most attracted
the fancy of poets, dramatists, novelists, and painters, from their own time
down to the present day.
In some respects there is a certain likeness in their careers. Each was
queen of a nation whose affairs were entangled with those of a much greater
one. Each sought for her own ideal of love until she found it. Each won that
love recklessly, almost madly. Each, in its attainment, fell from power and
fortune. Each died before her natural life was ended. One caused the man
she loved to cast away the sovereignty of a mighty state. The other lost her
own crown in order that she might achieve the whole desire of her heart.
There is still another parallel which may be found. Each of these women
was reputed to be exquisitely beautiful; yet each fell short of beauty's
highest standards. They are alike remembered in song and story because of
qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm can be. They
impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just as they had
impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason of a strange
and irresistible fascination which no one could explain, but which very few
could experience and resist.
Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when the
kingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes.
James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinary monarch.
As a mere boy he had burst the bonds with which a regency had bound him,
and he had ruled the wild Scotland of the sixteenth century. He was brave
and crafty, keen in statesmanship, and dissolute in pleasure.
His first wife had given him no heirs; so at her death he sought out a
princess whom he pursued all the more ardently because she was also
courted by the burly Henry VIII. of England. This girl was Marie of
Lorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise. She was fit to be the mother of a
lion's brood, for she was above six feet in height and of proportions so

ample as to excite the admiration of the royal voluptuary who sat upon the
throne of England.
"I am big," said he, "and I want a wife who is as big as I am."
But James of Scotland wooed in person, and not by embassies, and he
triumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England gnawed
his beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in another
woman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public but as a private enemy.
There was war between the two countries. First the Scots repelled an
English army; but soon they were themselves disgracefully defeated at
Solway Moss by a force much their inferior in numbers. The shame of it
broke King James's heart. As he was galloping from the battle-field the
news was brought him that his wife had given birth to a daughter. He took
little notice of the message; and in a few days he had died, moaning with
his last breath the mysterious words:
"It came with a lass—with a lass it will go!"
The child who was born at this ill-omened crisis was Mary Stuart, who
within a week became, in her own right, Queen of Scotland. Her mother
acted as regent of the kingdom. Henry of England demanded that the infant
girl should be betrothed to his young son, Prince Edward, who afterward
reigned as Edward VI., though he died while still a boy. The proposal was
rejected, and the war between England and Scotland went on its bloody
course; but meanwhile the little queen was sent to France, her mother's
home, so that she might be trained in accomplishments which were rare in
Scotland.
In France she grew up at the court of Catherine de' Medici, that
imperious intriguer whose splendid surroundings were tainted with the
corruption which she had brought from her native Italy. It was, indeed, a
singular training-school for a girl of Mary Stuart's character. She saw about
her a superficial chivalry and a most profound depravity. Poets like Ronsard
graced the life of the court with exquisite verse. Troubadours and minstrels
sang sweet music there. There were fetes and tournaments and gallantry of
bearing; yet, on the other hand, there was every possible refinement and
variety of vice. Men were slain before the eyes of the queen herself. The
talk of the court was of intrigue and lust and evil things which often verged
on crime. Catherine de' Medici herself kept her nominal husband at arm's-
length; and in order to maintain her grasp on France she connived at the

corruption of her own children, three of whom were destined in their turn to
sit upon the throne.
Mary Stuart grew up in these surroundings until she was sixteen, eating
the fruit which gave a knowledge of both good and evil. Her intelligence
was very great. She quickly learned Italian, French, and Latin. She was a
daring horsewoman. She was a poet and an artist even in her teens. She was
also a keen judge of human motives, for those early years of hers had forced
her into a womanhood that was premature but wonderful. It had been
proposed that she should marry the eldest son of Catherine, so that in time
the kingdom of Scotland and that of France might be united, while if
Elizabeth of England were to die unmarried her realm also would fall to this
pair of children.
And so Mary, at sixteen, wedded the Dauphin Francis, who was a year
her junior. The prince was a wretched, whimpering little creature, with a
cankered body and a blighted soul. Marriage with such a husband seemed
absurd. It never was a marriage in reality. The sickly child would cry all
night, for he suffered from abscesses in his ears, and his manhood had been
prematurely taken from him. Nevertheless, within a twelvemonth the
French king died and Mary Stuart was Queen of France as well as of
Scotland, hampered only by her nominal obedience to the sick boy whom
she openly despised. At seventeen she showed herself a master spirit. She
held her own against the ambitious Catherine de' Medici, whom she
contemptuously nicknamed "the apothecary's daughter." For the brief period
of a year she was actually the ruler of France; but then her husband died and
she was left a widow, restless, ambitious, and yet no longer having any of
the power she loved.
Mary Stuart at this time had become a woman whose fascination was
exerted over all who knew her. She was very tall and very slim, with
chestnut hair, "like a flower of the heat, both lax and delicate." Her skin was
fair and pale, so clear and so transparent as to make the story plausible that
when she drank from a flask of wine, the red liquid could be seen passing
down her slender throat.
Yet with all this she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She
could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had
the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed her to
be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was, she was the

mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of atmosphere that turned
the heads of men. The Stuart blood made her impatient of control, careless
of state, and easy-mannered. The French and the Tudor strain gave her
vivacity. She could be submissive in appearance while still persisting in her
aims. She could be languorous and seductive while cold within. Again, she
could assume the haughtiness which belonged to one who was twice a
queen.
Two motives swayed her, and they fought together for supremacy. One
was the love of power, and the other was the love of love. The first was
natural to a girl who was a sovereign in her own right. The second was
inherited, and was then forced into a rank luxuriance by the sort of life that
she had seen about her. At eighteen she was a strangely amorous creature,
given to fondling and kissing every one about her, with slight
discrimination. From her sense of touch she received emotions that were
almost necessary to her existence. With her slender, graceful hands she was
always stroking the face of some favorite—it might be only the face of a
child, or it might be the face of some courtier or poet, or one of the four
Marys whose names are linked with hers—Mary Livingstone, Mary
Fleming, Mary Beaton, and Mary Seton, the last of whom remained with
her royal mistress until her death.
But one must not be too censorious in thinking of Mary Stuart. She was
surrounded everywhere by enemies. During her stay in France she was
hated by the faction of Catherine de' Medici. When she returned to Scotland
she was hated because of her religion by the Protestant lords. Her every
action was set forth in the worst possible light. The most sinister meaning
was given to everything she said or did. In truth, we must reject almost all
the stories which accuse her of anything more than a certain levity of
conduct.
She was not a woman to yield herself in love's last surrender unless her
intellect and heart alike had been made captive. She would listen to the
passionate outpourings of poets and courtiers, and she would plunge her
eyes into theirs, and let her hair just touch their faces, and give them her
white hands to kiss—but that was all. Even in this she was only following
the fashion of the court where she was bred, and she was not unlike her
royal relative, Elizabeth of England, who had the same external
amorousness coupled with the same internal self-control.

Mary Stuart's love life makes a piteous story, for it is the life of one who
was ever seeking—seeking for the man to whom she could look up, who
could be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same time be
more powerful and more steadfast even than she herself in mind and
thought. Whatever may be said of her, and howsoever the facts may be
colored by partisans, this royal girl, stung though she was by passion and
goaded by desire, cared nothing for any man who could not match her in
body and mind and spirit all at once.
It was in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their
union came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to her one
day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a few years
older than she, and in his presence for the first time she felt, in her own
despite, that profoundly moving, indescribable, and never-to-be-forgotten
thrill which shakes a woman to the very center of her being, since it is the
recognition of a complete affinity.
Lord Bothwell, like Queen Mary, has been terribly maligned. Unlike her,
he has found only a few defenders. Maurice Hewlett has drawn a picture of
him more favorable than many, and yet it is a picture that repels. Bothwell,
says he, was of a type esteemed by those who pronounce vice to be their
virtue. He was "a galliard, flushed with rich blood, broad-shouldered,
square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that the world, rejoicing
to hear it, thought all must be well wherever he might be. He wore brave
clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept brave company bravely. His high color,
while it betokened high feeding, got him the credit of good health. His little
eyes twinkled so merrily that you did not see they were like a pig's, sly and
greedy at once, and bloodshot. His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung,
a chin jutting and dangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing
hid that too. The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or
guessed at the brawl which must have given it to him. Frankness was his
great charm, careless ease in high places."
And so, when Mary Stuart first met him in her eighteenth year, Lord
Bothwell made her think as she had never thought of any other man, and as
she was not to think of any other man again. She grew to look eagerly for
the frank mockery "in those twinkling eyes, in that quick mouth"; and to
wonder whether it was with him always—asleep, at prayers, fighting,
furious, or in love.

Something more, however, must be said of Bothwell. He was
undoubtedly a roisterer, but he was very much a man. He made easy love to
women. His sword leaped quickly from its sheath. He could fight, and he
could also think. He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake.
Remembering what Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem
in reality a princely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he
could write fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of them
also. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a book-
plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Here is a man
of varied accomplishments and of a complex character.
Though he stayed but a short time near the queen in France, he kindled
her imagination, so that when she seriously thought of men she thought of
Bothwell. And yet all the time she was fondling the young pages in her
retinue and kissing her maids of honor with her scarlet lips, and lying on
their knees, while poets like Ronsard and Chastelard wrote ardent love
sonnets to her and sighed and pined for something more than the privilege
of kissing her two dainty hands.
In 1561, less than a year after her widowhood, Mary set sail for Scotland,
never to return. The great high-decked ships which escorted her sailed into
the harbor of Leith, and she pressed on to Edinburgh. A depressing change
indeed from the sunny terraces and fields of France! In her own realm were
fog and rain and only a hut to shelter her upon her landing. When she
reached her capital there were few welcoming cheers; but as she rode over
the cobblestones to Holyrood, the squalid wynds vomited forth great mobs
of hard-featured, grim-visaged men and women who stared with curiosity
and a half-contempt at the girl queen and her retinue of foreigners.
The Scots were Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted their
new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to surround herself
with dainty things and bright colors and exotic elegance. They feared lest
she should try to repeal the law of Scotland's Parliament which had made
the country Protestant.
The very indifference of her subjects stirred up the nobler part of Mary's
nature. For a time she was indeed a queen. She governed wisely. She
respected the religious rights of her Protestant subjects. She strove to bring
order out of the chaos into which her country had fallen. And she met with
some success. The time came when her people cheered her as she rode

among them. Her subtle fascination was her greatest source of strength.
Even John Knox, that iron-visaged, stentorian preacher, fell for a time under
the charm of her presence. She met him frankly and pleaded with him as a
woman, instead of commanding him as a queen. The surly ranter became
softened for a time, and, though he spoke of her to others as "Honeypot," he
ruled his tongue in public. She had offers of marriage from Austrian and
Spanish princes. The new King of France, her brother-in-law, would
perhaps have wedded her. It mattered little to Mary that Elizabeth of
England was hostile. She felt that she was strong enough to hold her own
and govern Scotland.
But who could govern a country such as Scotland was? It was a land of
broils and feuds, of clan enmities and fierce vendettas. Its nobles were half
barbarous, and they fought and slashed at one another with drawn dirks
almost in the presence of the queen herself. No matter whom she favored,
there rose up a swarm of enemies. Here was a Corsica of the north, more
savage and untamed than even the other Corsica.
In her perplexity Mary felt a woman's need of some man on whom she
would have the right to lean, and whom she could make king consort. She
thought that she had found him in the person of her cousin, Lord Darnley, a
Catholic, and by his upbringing half an Englishman. Darnley came to
Scotland, and for the moment Mary fancied that she had forgotten
Bothwell. Here again she was in love with love, and she idealized the man
who came to give it to her. Darnley seemed, indeed, well worthy to be
loved, for he was tall and handsome, appearing well on horseback and
having some of the accomplishments which Mary valued.
It was a hasty wooing, and the queen herself was first of all the wooer.
Her quick imagination saw in Darnley traits and gifts of which he really had
no share. Therefore, the marriage was soon concluded, and Scotland had
two sovereigns, King Henry and Queen Mary. So sure was Mary of her
indifference to Bothwell that she urged the earl to marry, and he did marry a
girl of the great house of Gordon.
Mary's self-suggested love for Darnley was extinguished almost on her
wedding-night. The man was a drunkard who came into her presence
befuddled and almost bestial. He had no brains. His vanity was enormous.
He loved no one but himself, and least of all this queen, whom he regarded
as having thrown herself at his empty head.

The first-fruits of the marriage were uprisings among the Protestant lords.
Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a motley band of
soldiery who came at her call—half-clad, uncouth, and savage—she rode
into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground, sharing the camp
food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce as any eagle. Her spirit ran
like fire through the veins of those who followed her. She crushed the
insurrection, scattered its leaders, and returned in triumph to her capital.
Now she was really queen, but here came in the other motive which was
interwoven in her character. She had shown herself a man in courage.
Should she not have the pleasures of a woman? To her court in Holyrood
came Bothwell once again, and this time Mary knew that he was all the
world to her. Darnley had shrunk from the hardships of battle. He was
steeped in low intrigues. He roused the constant irritation of the queen by
his folly and utter lack of sense and decency. Mary felt she owed him
nothing, but she forgot that she owed much to herself.
Her old amorous ways came back to her, and she relapsed into the joys of
sense. The scandal-mongers of the capital saw a lover in every man with
whom she talked. She did, in fact, set convention at defiance. She dressed in
men's clothing. She showed what the unemotional Scots thought to be
unseemly levity. The French poet, Chastelard, misled by her external signs
of favor, believed himself to be her choice. At the end of one mad revel he
was found secreted beneath her bed, and was driven out by force. A second
time he ventured to secrete himself within the covers of the bed. Then he
was dragged forth, imprisoned, and condemned to death. He met his fate
without a murmur, save at the last when he stood upon the scaffold and,
gazing toward the palace, cried in French:
"Oh, cruel queen! I die for you!"
Another favorite, the Italian, David Rizzio, or Riccio, in like manner
wrote love verses to the queen, and she replied to them in kind; but there is
no evidence that she valued him save for his ability, which was very great.
She made him her foreign secretary, and the man whom he supplanted
worked on the jealousy of Darnley; so that one night, while Mary and
Rizzio were at dinner in a small private chamber, Darnley and the others
broke in upon her. Darnley held her by the waist while Rizzio was stabbed
before her eyes with a cruelty the greater because the queen was soon to
become a mother.

From that moment she hated Darnley as one would hate a snake. She
tolerated him only that he might acknowledge her child as his son. This
child was the future James VI. of Scotland and James I. of England. It is
recorded of him that never throughout his life could he bear to look upon
drawn steel.
After this Mary summoned Bothwell again and again. It was revealed to
her as in a blaze of light that, after all, he was the one and only man who
could be everything to her. His frankness, his cynicism, his mockery, his
carelessness, his courage, and the power of his mind matched her moods
completely. She threw away all semblance of concealment. She ignored the
fact that he had married at her wish. She was queen. She desired him. She
must have him at any cost.
"Though I lose Scotland and England both," she cried in a passion of
abandonment, "I shall have him for my own!"
Bothwell, in his turn, was nothing loath, and they leaped at each other
like two flames.
It was then that Mary wrote those letters which were afterward
discovered in a casket and which were used against her when she was on
trial for her life. These so-called Casket Letters, though we have not now
the originals, are among the most extraordinary letters ever written. All
shame, all hesitation, all innocence, are flung away in them. The writer is so
fired with passion that each sentence is like a cry to a lover in the dark. As
De Peyster says: "In them the animal instincts override and spur and lash
the pen." Mary was committing to paper the frenzied madness of a woman
consumed to her very marrow by the scorching blaze of unendurable desire.
Events moved quickly. Darnley, convalescent from an attack of smallpox,
was mysteriously destroyed by an explosion of gunpowder. Bothwell was
divorced from his young wife on curious grounds. A dispensation allowed
Mary to wed a Protestant, and she married Bothwell three months after
Darnley's death.
Here one sees the consummation of what had begun many years before in
France. From the moment that she and Bothwell met, their union was
inevitable. Seas could not sunder them. Other loves and other fancies were
as nothing to them. Even the bonds of marriage were burst asunder so that
these two fiery, panting souls could meet.

It was the irony of fate that when they had so met it was only to be
parted. Mary's subjects, outraged by her conduct, rose against her. As she
passed through the streets of Edinburgh the women hurled after her
indecent names. Great banners were raised with execrable daubs
representing the murdered Darnley. The short and dreadful monosyllable
which is familiar to us in the pages of the Bible was hurled after her
wherever she went.
With Bothwell by her side she led a wild and ragged horde of followers
against the rebellious nobles, whose forces met her at Carberry Hill. Her
motley followers melted away, and Mary surrendered to the hostile
chieftains, who took her to the castle at Lochleven. There she became the
mother of twins—a fact that is seldom mentioned by historians. These
children were the fruit of her union with Bothwell. From this time forth she
cared but little for herself, and she signed, without great reluctance, a
document by which she abdicated in favor of her infant son.
Even in this place of imprisonment, however, her fascination had power
to charm. Among those who guarded her, two of the Douglas family—
George Douglas and William Douglas—for love of her, effected her escape.
The first attempt failed. Mary, disguised as a laundress, was betrayed by the
delicacy of her hands. But a second attempt was successful. The queen
passed through a postern gate and made her way to the lake, where George
Douglas met her with a boat. Crossing the lake, fifty horsemen under Lord
Claude Hamilton gave her their escort and bore her away in safety.
But Mary was sick of Scotland, for Bothwell could not be there. She had
tasted all the bitterness of life, and for a few months all the sweetness; but
she would have no more of this rough and barbarous country. Of her own
free will she crossed the Solway into England, to find herself at once a
prisoner.
Never again did she set eyes on Bothwell. After the battle of Carberry
Hill he escaped to the north, gathered some ships together, and preyed upon
English merchantmen, very much as a pirate might have done. Ere long,
however, when he had learned of Mary's fate, he set sail for Norway. King
Frederick of Denmark made him a prisoner of state. He was not confined
within prison walls, however, but was allowed to hunt and ride in the
vicinity of Malmo Castle and of Dragsholm. It is probably in Malmo Castle
that he died. In 1858 a coffin which was thought to be the coffin of the earl

was opened, and a Danish artist sketched the head—which corresponds
quite well with the other portraits of the ill-fated Scottish noble.
It is a sad story. Had Mary been less ambitious when she first met
Bothwell, or had he been a little bolder, they might have reigned together
and lived out their lives in the plenitude of that great love which held them
both in thrall. But a queen is not as other women; and she found too late
that the teaching of her heart was, after all, the truest teaching. She went to
her death as Bothwell went to his, alone, in a strange, unfriendly land.
Yet, even this, perhaps, was better so. It has at least touched both their
lives with pathos and has made the name of Mary Stuart one to be
remembered throughout all the ages.

QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN AND THE
MARQUIS MONALDESCHI
Sweden to-day is one of the peaceful kingdoms of the world, whose
people are prosperous, well governed, and somewhat apart from the clash
and turmoil of other states and nations. Even the secession of Norway, a
few years ago, was accomplished without bloodshed, and now the two
kingdoms exist side by side as free from strife as they are with Denmark,
which once domineered and tyrannized over both.
It is difficult to believe that long ago, in the Middle Ages, the cities of
southern Sweden were among the great commercial centers of the world.
Stockholm and Lund ranked with London and Paris. They absorbed the
commerce of the northern seas, and were the admiration of thousands of
travelers and merchants who passed through them and trafficked with them.
Much nearer to our own time, Sweden was the great military power of
northern Europe. The ambassadors of the Swedish kings were received with
the utmost deference in every court. Her soldiers won great battles and
ended mighty wars. The England of Cromwell and Charles II. was
unimportant and isolated in comparison with this northern kingdom, which
could pour forth armies of gigantic blond warriors, headed by generals
astute as well as brave.
It was no small matter, then, in 1626, that the loyal Swedes were hoping
that their queen would give birth to a male heir to succeed his splendid
father, Gustavus Adolphus, ranked by military historians as one of the six
great generals whom the world had so far produced. The queen, a German
princess of Brandenburg, had already borne two daughters, who died in
infancy. The expectation was wide-spread and intense that she should now
become the mother of a son; and the king himself was no less anxious.
When the event occurred, the child was seen to be completely covered
with hair, and for this reason the attendants at first believed that it was the
desired boy. When their mistake was discovered they were afraid to tell the
king, who was waiting in his study for the announcement to be made. At

last, when no one else would go to him, his sister, the Princess Caroline,
volunteered to break the news.
Gustavus was in truth a chivalrous, high-bred monarch. Though he must
have been disappointed at the advent of a daughter, he showed no sign of
dissatisfaction or even of surprise; but, rising, he embraced his sister,
saying:
"Let us thank God. I hope this girl will be as good as a boy to me. May
God preserve her now that He has sent her!"
It is customary at almost all courts to pay less attention to the birth of a
princess than to that of a prince; but Gustavus displayed his chivalry toward
this little daughter, whom he named Christina. He ordered that the full royal
salute should be fired in every fortress of his kingdom and that displays of
fireworks, balls of honor, and court functions should take place; "for," as he
said, "this is the heir to my throne." And so from the first he took his child
under his own keeping and treated her as if she were a much-loved son as
well as a successor.
He joked about her looks when she was born, when she was mistaken for
a boy.
"She will be clever," he said, "for she has taken us all in!"
The Swedish people were as delighted with their little princess as were
the people of Holland when the present Queen Wilhelmina was born, to
carry on the succession of the House of Orange. On one occasion the king
and the small Christina, who were inseparable companions, happened to
approach a fortress where they expected to spend the night. The commander
of the castle was bound to fire a royal salute of fifty cannon in honor of his
sovereign; yet he dreaded the effect upon the princess of such a roaring and
bellowing of artillery. He therefore sent a swift horseman to meet the royal
party at a distance and explain his perplexity. Should he fire these guns or
not? Would the king give an order?
Gustavus thought for a moment, and then replied:
"My daughter is the daughter of a soldier, and she must learn to lead a
soldier's life. Let the guns be fired!"
The procession moved on. Presently fire spurted from the embrasures of
the fort, and its batteries thundered in one great roar. The king looked down

at Christina. Her face was aglow with pleasure and excitement; she clapped
her hands and laughed, and cried out:
"More bang! More! More! More!"
This is only one of a score of stories that were circulated about the
princess, and the Swedes were more and more delighted with the girl who
was to be their queen.
Somewhat curiously, Christina's mother, Queen Maria, cared little for the
child, and, in fact, came at last to detest her almost as much as the king
loved her. It is hard to explain this dislike. Perhaps she had a morbid desire
for a son and begrudged the honors given to a daughter. Perhaps she was a
little jealous of her own child, who took so much of the king's attention.
Afterward, in writing of her mother, Christina excuses her, and says quite
frankly:
She could not bear to see me, because I was a girl, and an ugly girl at
that. And she was right enough, for I was as tawny as a little Turk.
This candid description of herself is hardly just. Christina was never
beautiful, and she had a harsh voice. She was apt to be overbearing even as
a little girl. Yet she was a most interesting child, with an expressive face,
large eyes, an aquiline nose, and the blond hair of her people. There was
nothing in this to account for her mother's intense dislike for her.
It was currently reported at the time that attempts were made to maim or
seriously injure the little princess. By what was made to seem an accident,
she would be dropped upon the floor, and heavy articles of furniture would
somehow manage to strike her. More than once a great beam fell
mysteriously close to her, either in the palace or while she was passing
through the streets. None of these things did her serious harm, however.
Most of them she luckily escaped; but when she had grown to be a woman
one of her shoulders was permanently higher than the other.
"I suppose," said Christina, "that I could be straightened if I would let the
surgeons attend to it; but it isn't worth while to take the trouble."
When Christina was four, Sweden became involved in the great war that
had been raging for a dozen years between the Protestant and the Catholic
states of Germany. Gradually the neighboring powers had been drawn into
the struggle, either to serve their own ends or to support the faith to which
they adhered. Gustavus Adolphus took up the sword with mixed motives,

for he was full of enthusiasm for the imperiled cause of the Reformation,
and at the same time he deemed it a favorable opportunity to assert his
control over the shores of the Baltic.
The warrior king summoned his army and prepared to invade Germany.
Before departing he took his little daughter by the hand and led her among
the assembled nobles and councilors of state. To them he intrusted the
princess, making them kneel and vow that they would regard her as his heir,
and, if aught should happen to him, as his successor. Amid the clashing of
swords and the clang of armor this vow was taken, and the king went forth
to war.
He met the ablest generals of his enemies, and the fortunes of battle
swayed hither and thither; but the climax came when his soldiers
encountered those of Wallenstein—that strange, overbearing, arrogant,
mysterious creature whom many regarded with a sort of awe. The clash
came at Lutzen, in Saxony. The Swedish king fought long and hard, and so
did his mighty opponent; but at last, in the very midst of a tremendous onset
that swept all before him, Gustavus received a mortal wound and died, even
while Wallenstein was fleeing from the field of battle.
The battle of Lutzen made Christina Queen of Sweden at the age of six.
Of course, she could not yet be crowned, but a council of able ministers
continued the policy of the late king and taught the young queen her first
lessons in statecraft. Her intellect soon showed itself as more than that of a
child. She understood all that was taking place, and all that was planned and
arranged. Her tact was unusual. Her discretion was admired by every one;
and after a while she had the advice and training of the great Swedish
chancellor, Oxenstierna, whose wisdom she shared to a remarkable degree.
Before she was sixteen she had so approved herself to her counselors,
and especially to the people at large, that there was a wide-spread clamor
that she should take the throne and govern in her own person. To this she
gave no heed, but said:
"I am not yet ready."
All this time she bore herself like a king. There was nothing distinctly
feminine about her. She took but slight interest in her appearance. She wore
sword and armor in the presence of her troops, and often she dressed
entirely in men's clothes. She would take long, lonely gallops through the

forests, brooding over problems of state and feeling no fatigue or fear. And
indeed why should she fear, who was beloved by all her subjects?
When her eighteenth year arrived, the demand for her coronation was
impossible to resist. All Sweden wished to see a ruling queen, who might
marry and have children to succeed her through the royal line of her great
father. Christina consented to be crowned, but she absolutely refused all
thought of marriage. She had more suitors from all parts of Europe than
even Elizabeth of England; but, unlike Elizabeth, she did not dally with
them, give them false hopes, or use them for the political advantage of her
kingdom.
At that time Sweden was stronger than England, and was so situated as to
be independent of alliances. So Christina said, in her harsh, peremptory
voice:
"I shall never marry; and why should you speak of my having children! I
am just as likely to give birth to a Nero as to an Augustus."
Having assumed the throne, she ruled with a strictness of government
such as Sweden had not known before. She took the reins of state into her
own hands and carried out a foreign policy of her own, over the heads of
her ministers, and even against the wishes of her people. The fighting upon
the Continent had dragged out to a weary length, but the Swedes, on the
whole, had scored a marked advantage. For this reason the war was popular,
and every one wished it to go on; but Christina, of her own will, decided
that it must stop, that mere glory was not to be considered against material
advantages. Sweden had had enough of glory; she must now look to her
enrichment and prosperity through the channels of peace.
Therefore, in 1648, against Oxenstierna, against her generals, and against
her people, she exercised her royal power and brought the Thirty Years' War
to an end by the so-called Peace of Westphalia. At this time she was twenty-
two, and by her personal influence she had ended one of the greatest
struggles of history. Nor had she done it to her country's loss. Denmark
yielded up rich provinces, while Germany was compelled to grant Sweden
membership in the German diet.
Then came a period of immense prosperity through commerce, through
economies in government, through the improvement of agriculture and the
opening of mines. This girl queen, without intrigue, without descending
from her native nobility to peep and whisper with shady diplomats, showed

herself in reality a great monarch, a true Semiramis of the north, more
worthy of respect and reverence than Elizabeth of England. She was highly
trained in many arts. She was fond of study, spoke Latin fluently, and could
argue with Salmasius, Descartes, and other accomplished scholars without
showing any inferiority to them.
She gathered at her court distinguished persons from all countries. She
repelled those who sought her hand, and she was pure and truthful and
worthy of all men's admiration. Had she died at this time history would rank
her with the greatest of women sovereigns. Naude, the librarian of Cardinal
Mazarin, wrote of her to the scientist Gassendi in these words:
To say truth, I am sometimes afraid lest the common saying should be
verified in her, that short is the life and rare the old age of those who
surpass the common limits. Do not imagine that she is learned only in
books, for she is equally so in painting, architecture, sculpture, medals,
antiquities, and all curiosities. There is not a cunning workman in these arts
but she has him fetched. There are as good workers in wax and in enamel,
engravers, singers, players, dancers here as will be found anywhere.
She has a gallery of statues, bronze and marble, medals of gold, silver,
and bronze, pieces of ivory, amber, coral, worked crystal, steel mirrors,
clocks and tables, bas-reliefs and other things of the kind; richer I have
never seen even in Italy; finally, a great quantity of pictures. In short, her
mind is open to all impressions.
But after she began to make her court a sort of home for art and letters it
ceased to be the sort of court that Sweden was prepared for. Christina's
subjects were still rude and lacking in accomplishments; therefore she had
to summon men of genius from other countries, especially from France and
Italy. Many of these were illustrious artists or scholars, but among them
were also some who used their mental gifts for harm.
Among these latter was a French physician named Bourdelot—a man of
keen intellect, of winning manners, and of a profound cynicism, which was
not apparent on the surface, but the effect of which last lasting. To
Bourdelot we must chiefly ascribe the mysterious change which gradually
came over Queen Christina. With his associates he taught her a distaste for
the simple and healthy life that she had been accustomed to lead. She
ceased to think of the welfare of the state and began to look down with

scorn upon her unsophisticated Swedes. Foreign luxury displayed itself at
Stockholm, and her palaces overflowed with beautiful things.
By subtle means Bourdelot undermined her principles. Having been a
Stoic, she now became an Epicurean. She was by nature devoid of
sentiment. She would not spend her time in the niceties of love-making, as
did Elizabeth; but beneath the surface she had a sort of tigerish, passionate
nature, which would break forth at intervals, and which demanded
satisfaction from a series of favorites. It is probable that Bourdelot was her
first lover, but there were many others whose names are recorded in the
annals of the time.
When she threw aside her virtue Christina ceased to care about
appearances. She squandered her revenues upon her favorites. What she
retained of her former self was a carelessness that braved the opinion of her
subjects. She dressed almost without thought, and it is said that she combed
her hair not more than twice a month. She caroused with male companions
to the scandal of her people, and she swore like a trooper when displeased.
Christina's philosophy of life appears to have been compounded of an
almost brutal licentiousness, a strong love of power, and a strange, freakish
longing for something new. Her political ambitions were checked by the
rising discontent of her people, who began to look down upon her and to
feel ashamed of her shame. Knowing herself as she did, she did not care to
marry.
Yet Sweden must have an heir. Therefore she chose out her cousin
Charles, declared that he was to be her successor, and finally caused him to
be proclaimed as such before the assembled estates of the realm. She even
had him crowned; and finally, in her twenty-eighth year, she abdicated
altogether and prepared to leave Sweden. When asked whither she would
go, she replied in a Latin quotation:
"The Fates will show the way."
In her act of abdication she reserved to herself the revenues of some of
the richest provinces in Sweden and absolute power over such of her
subjects as should accompany her. They were to be her subjects until the
end.
The Swedes remembered that Christina was the daughter of their greatest
king, and that, apart from personal scandals, she had ruled them well; and
so they let her go regretfully and accepted her cousin as their king.

Christina, on her side, went joyfully and in the spirit of a grand adventuress.
With a numerous suite she entered Germany, and then stayed for a year at
Brussels, where she renounced Lutheranism. After this she traveled slowly
into Italy, where she entered Borne on horseback, and was received by the
Pope, Alexander VII., who lodged her in a magnificent palace, accepted her
conversion, and baptized her, giving her a new name, Alexandra.
In Rome she was a brilliant but erratic personage, living sumptuously,
even though her revenues from Sweden came in slowly, partly because the
Swedes disliked her change of religion. She was surrounded by men of
letters, with whom she amused herself, and she took to herself a lover, the
Marquis Monaldeschi. She thought that at last she had really found her true
affinity, while Monaldeschi believed that he could count on the queen's
fidelity.
He was in attendance upon her daily, and they were almost inseparable.
He swore allegiance to her and thereby made himself one of the subjects
over whom she had absolute power. For a time he was the master of those
intense emotions which, in her, alternated with moods of coldness and even
cruelty.
Monaldeschi was a handsome Italian, who bore himself with a fine air of
breeding. He understood the art of charming, but he did not know that
beyond a certain time no one could hold the affections of Christina.
However, after she had quarreled with various cardinals and decided to
leave Rome for a while, Monaldeschi accompanied her to France, where
she had an immense vogue at the court of Louis XIV. She attracted wide
attention because of her eccentricity and utter lack of manners. It gave her
the greatest delight to criticize the ladies of the French court—their looks,
their gowns, and their jewels. They, in return, would speak of Christina's
deformed shoulder and skinny frame; but the king was very gracious to her
and invited her to his hunting-palace at Fontainebleau.
While she had been winning triumphs of sarcasm the infatuated
Monaldeschi had gradually come to suspect, and then to know, that his
royal mistress was no longer true to him. He had been supplanted in her
favor by another Italian, one Sentanelli, who was the captain of her guard.
Monaldeschi took a tortuous and roundabout revenge. He did not let the
queen know of his discovery; nor did he, like a man, send a challenge to
Sentanelli. Instead he began by betraying her secrets to Oliver Cromwell,

with whom she had tried to establish a correspondence. Again, imitating the
hand and seal of Sentanelli, he set in circulation a series of the most
scandalous and insulting letters about Christina. By this treacherous trick he
hoped to end the relations between his rival and the queen; but when the
letters were carried to Christina she instantly recognized their true source.
She saw that she was betrayed by her former favorite and that he had taken
a revenge which might seriously compromise her.
This led to a tragedy, of which the facts were long obscure. They were
carefully recorded, however, by the queen's household chaplain, Father Le
Bel; and there is also a narrative written by one Marco Antonio Conti,
which confirms the story. Both were published privately in 1865, with notes
by Louis Lacour.
The narration of the priest is dreadful in its simplicity and minuteness of
detail. It may be summed up briefly here, because it is the testimony of an
eye-witness who knew Christina.
Christina, with the marquis and a large retinue, was at Fontainebleau in
November, 1657. A little after midnight, when all was still, the priest,
Father Le Bel, was aroused and ordered to go at once to the Galerie des
Cerfs, or Hall of Stags, in another part of the palace. When he asked why,
he was told:
"It is by the order of her majesty the Swedish queen."
The priest, wondering, hurried on his garments. On reaching the gloomy
hall he saw the Marquis Monaldeschi, evidently in great agitation, and at
the end of the corridor the queen in somber robes. Beside the queen, as if
awaiting orders, stood three figures, who could with some difficulty be
made out as three soldiers of her guard.
The queen motioned to Father Le Bel and asked him for a packet which
she had given him for safe-keeping some little time before. He gave it to
her, and she opened it. In it were letters and other documents, which, with a
steely glance, she displayed to Monaldeschi. He was confused by the sight
of them and by the incisive words in which Christina showed how he had
both insulted her and had tried to shift the blame upon Sentanelli.
Monaldeschi broke down completely. He fell at the queen's feet and wept
piteously, begging for pardon, only to be met by the cold answer:

"You are my subject and a traitor to me. Marquis, you must prepare to
die!"
Then she turned away and left the hall, in spite of the cries of
Monaldeschi, to whom she merely added the advice that he should make his
peace with God by confessing to Father Le Bel.
After she had gone the marquis fell into a torrent of self-exculpation and
cried for mercy. The three armed men drew near and urged him to confess
for the good of his soul. They seemed to have no malice against him, but to
feel that they must obey the orders given them. At the frantic urging of the
marquis their leader even went to the queen to ask whether she would
relent; but he returned shaking his head, and said:
"Marquis, you must die."
Father Le Bel undertook a like mission, but returned with the message
that there was no hope. So the marquis made his confession in French and
Latin, but even then he hoped; for he did not wait to receive absolution, but
begged still further for delay or pardon.
Then the three armed men approached, having drawn their swords. The
absolution was pronounced; and, following it, one of the guards slashed the
marquis across the forehead. He stumbled and fell forward, making signs as
if to ask that he might have his throat cut. But his throat was partly
protected by a coat of mail, so that three or four strokes delivered there had
slight effect. Finally, however, a long, narrow sword was thrust into his
side, after which the marquis made no sound.
Father Le Bel at once left the Galerie des Cerfs and went into the queen's
apartment, with the smell of blood in his nostrils. He found her calm and
ready to justify herself. Was she not still queen over all who had voluntarily
become members of her suite? This had been agreed to in her act of
abdication. Wherever she set her foot, there, over her own, she was still a
monarch, with full power to punish traitors at her will. This power she had
exercised, and with justice. What mattered it that she was in France? She
was queen as truly as Louis XIV. was king.
The story was not long in getting out, but the truth was not wholly known
until a much later day. It was said that Sentanelli had slapped the marquis in
a fit of jealousy, though some added that it was done with the connivance of
the queen. King Louis, the incarnation of absolutism, knew the truth, but he
was slow to act. He sympathized with the theory of Christina's sovereignty.

It was only after a time that word was sent to Christina that she must leave
Fontainebleau. She took no notice of the order until it suited her
convenience, and then she went forth with all the honors of a reigning
monarch.
This was the most striking episode in all the strange story of her private
life. When her cousin Charles, whom she had made king, died without an
heir she sought to recover her crown; but the estates of the realm refused
her claim, reduced her income, and imposed restraints upon her power. She
then sought the vacant throne of Poland; but the Polish nobles, who desired
a weak ruler for their own purposes, made another choice. So at last she
returned to Rome, where the Pope received her with a splendid procession
and granted her twelve thousand crowns a year to make up for her lessened
Swedish revenue.
From this time she lived a life which she made interesting by her
patronage of learning and exciting by her rather unseemly quarrels with
cardinals and even with the Pope. Her armed retinue marched through the
streets with drawn swords and gave open protection to criminals who had
taken refuge with her. She dared to criticize the pontiff, who merely smiled
and said:
"She is a woman!"
On the whole, the end of her life was pleasant. She was much admired
for her sagacity in politics. Her words were listened to at every court in
Europe. She annotated the classics, she made beautiful collections, and she
was regarded as a privileged person whose acts no one took amiss. She died
at fifty-three, and was buried in St. Peter's.
She was bred a man, she was almost a son to her great father; and yet,
instead of the sonorous epitaph that is inscribed beside her tomb, perhaps a
truer one would be the words of the vexed Pope:
"E DONNA!"

KING CHARLES II. AND NELL GWYN
One might classify the kings of England in many ways. John was
undoubtedly the most unpopular. The impetuous yet far-seeing Henry II.,
with the other two great warriors, Edward I. and Edward III., and William
of Orange, did most for the foundation and development of England's
constitutional law. Some monarchs, such as Edward II. and the womanish
Henry VI., have been contemptible. Hard-working, useful kings have been
Henry VII., the Georges, William IV., and especially the last Edward.
If we consider those monarchs who have in some curious way touched
the popular fancy without reference to their virtues we must go back to
Richard of the Lion Heart, who saw but little of England, yet was the best
essentially English king, and to Henry V., gallant soldier and conqueror of
France. Even Henry VIII. had a warm place in the affection of his
countrymen, few of whom saw him near at hand, but most of whom made
him a sort of regal incarnation of John Bull—wrestling and tilting and
boxing, eating great joints of beef, and staying his thirst with flagons of ale
—a big, healthy, masterful animal, in fact, who gratified the national love of
splendor and stood up manfully in his struggle with the Pope.
But if you look for something more than ordinary popularity—something
that belongs to sentiment and makes men willing to become martyrs for a
royal cause—we must find these among the Stuart kings. It is odd, indeed,
that even at this day there are Englishmen and Englishwomen who believe
their lawful sovereign to be a minor Bavarian princess in whose veins there
runs the Stuart blood. Prayers are said for her at English shrines, and toasts
are drunk to her in rare old wine.
Of course, to-day this cult of the Stuarts is nothing but a fad. No one ever
expects to see a Stuart on the English throne. But it is significant of the
deep strain of romance which the six Stuarts who reigned in England have
implanted in the English heart. The old Jacobite ballads still have power to
thrill. Queen Victoria herself used to have the pipers file out before her at
Balmoral to the "skirling" of "Bonnie Dundee," "Over the Water to
Charlie," and "Wha'll Be King but Charlie!" It is a sentiment that has never
died. Her late majesty used to say that when she heard these tunes she

became for the moment a Jacobite; just as the Empress Eugenie at the
height of her power used pertly to remark that she herself was the only
Legitimist left in France.
It may be suggested that the Stuarts are still loved by many Englishmen
because they were unfortunate; yet this is hardly true, after all. Many of
them were fortunate enough. The first of them, King James, an absurd
creature, speaking broad Scotch, timid, foolishly fond of favorites, and
having none of the dignity of a monarch, lived out a lengthy reign. The two
royal women of the family—Anne and Mary—had no misfortunes of a
public nature. Charles II. reigned for more than a quarter of a century,
lapped in every kind of luxury, and died a king.
The first Charles was beheaded and afterward styled a "saint"; yet the
majority of the English people were against his arrogance, or else he would
have won his great struggle against Parliament. The second James was not
popular at all. Nevertheless, no sooner had he been expelled, and been
succeeded by a Dutchman gnawing asparagus and reeking of cheeses, than
there was already a Stuart legend. Even had there been no pretenders to
carry on the cult, the Stuarts would still have passed into history as much
loved by the people.
It only shows how very little in former days the people expected of a
regnant king. Many monarchs have had just a few popular traits, and these
have stood out brilliantly against the darkness of the background.
No one could have cared greatly for the first James, but Charles I. was
indeed a kingly personage when viewed afar. He was handsome, as a man,
fully equaling the French princess who became his wife. He had no
personal vices. He was brave, and good to look upon, and had a kingly
mien. Hence, although he sought to make his rule over England a tyranny,
there were many fine old cavaliers to ride afield for him when he raised his
standard, and who, when he died, mourned for him as a "martyr."
Many hardships they underwent while Cromwell ruled with his iron
hand; and when that iron hand was relaxed in death, and poor, feeble
Richard Cromwell slunk away to his country-seat, what wonder is it that
young Charles came back to England and caracoled through the streets of
London with a smile for every one and a happy laugh upon his lips? What
wonder is it that the cannon in the Tower thundered a loud welcome, and
that all over England, at one season or another, maypoles rose and

Christmas fires blazed? For Englishmen at heart are not only monarchists,
but they are lovers of good cheer and merrymaking and all sorts of mirth.
Charles II. might well at first have seemed a worthier and wiser successor
to his splendid father. As a child, even, he had shown himself to be no faint-
hearted creature. When the great Civil War broke out he had joined his
father's army. It met with disaster at Edgehill, and was finally shattered by
the crushing defeat of Naseby, which afterward inspired Macaulay's most
stirring ballad.
Charles was then only a child of twelve, and so his followers did wisely
in hurrying him out of England, through the Scilly isles and Jersey to his
mother's place of exile. Of course, a child so very young could be of no
value as a leader, though his presence might prove an inspiration.
In 1648, however, when he was eighteen years of age, he gathered a fleet
of eighteen ships and cruised along the English coast, taking prizes, which
he carried to the Dutch ports. When he was at Holland's capital, during his
father's trial, he wrote many messages to the Parliamentarians, and even
sent them a blank charter, which they might fill in with any stipulations they
desired if only they would save and restore their king.
When the head of Charles rolled from the velvet-covered block his son
showed himself to be no loiterer or lover of an easy life. He hastened to
Scotland, skilfully escaping an English force, and was proclaimed as king
and crowned at Scone, in 1651. With ten thousand men he dashed into
England, where he knew there were many who would rally at his call. But it
was then that Cromwell put forth his supreme military genius and with his
Ironsides crushed the royal troops at Worcester.
Charles knew that for the present all was lost. He showed courage and
address in covering the flight of his beaten soldiers; but he soon afterward
went to France, remaining there and in the Netherlands for eight years as a
pensioner of Louis XIV. He knew that time would fight for him far more
surely than infantry and horse. England had not been called "Merry
England" for nothing; and Cromwell's tyranny was likely to be far more
resented than the heavy hand of one who was born a king. So Charles at
Paris and Liege, though he had little money at the time, managed to
maintain a royal court, such as it was.
Here there came out another side of his nature. As a child he had borne
hardship and privation and had seen the red blood flow upon the battlefield.

Now, as it were, he allowed a certain sensuous, pleasure-loving ease to
envelop him. The red blood should become the rich red burgundy; the
sound of trumpets and kettledrums should give way to the melody of lutes
and viols. He would be a king of pleasure if he were to be king at all. And
therefore his court, even in exile, was a court of gallantry and ease. The
Pope refused to lend him money, and the King of France would not increase
his pension, but there were many who foresaw that Charles would not long
remain in exile; and so they gave him what he wanted and waited until he
could give them what they would ask for in their turn.
Charles at this time was not handsome, like his father. His complexion
was swarthy, his figure by no means imposing, though always graceful.
When he chose he could bear himself with all the dignity of a monarch. He
had a singularly pleasant manner, and a word from him could win over the
harshest opponent.
The old cavaliers who accompanied their master in exile were like
Napoleon's veterans in Elba. With their tall, powerful forms they stalked
about the courtyards, sniffing their disapproval at these foreign ways and
longing grimly for the time when they could once more smell the pungent
powder of the battle-field. But, as Charles had hoped, the change was
coming. Not merely were his own subjects beginning to long for him and to
pray in secret for the king, but continental monarchs who maintained spies
in England began to know of this. To them Charles was no longer a
penniless exile. He was a king who before long would take possession of
his kingdom.
A very wise woman—the Queen Regent of Portugal—was the first to act
on this information. Portugal was then very far from being a petty state. It
had wealth at home and rich colonies abroad, while its flag was seen on
every sea. The queen regent, being at odds with Spain, and wishing to
secure an ally against that power, made overtures to Charles, asking him
whether a match might not be made between him and the Princess
Catharine of Braganza. It was not merely her daughter's hand that she
offered, but a splendid dowry. She would pay Charles a million pounds in
gold and cede to England two valuable ports.
The match was not yet made, but by 1659 it had been arranged. The
Spaniards were furious, for Charles's cause began to appear successful.

She was a quaint and rather piteous little figure, she who was destined to
be the wife of the Merry Monarch. Catharine was dark, petite, and by no
means beautiful; yet she had a very sweet expression and a heart of utter
innocence. She had been wholly convent-bred. She knew nothing of the
world. She was told that in marriage she must obey in all things, and that
the chief duty of a wife was to make her husband happy.
Poor child! It was a too gracious preparation for a very graceless
husband. Charles, in exile, had already made more than one discreditable
connection and he was already the father of more than one growing son.
First of all, he had been smitten by the bold ways of one Lucy Walters.
Her impudence amused the exiled monarch. She was not particularly
beautiful, and when she spoke as others did she was rather tiresome; but her
pertness and the inexperience of the king when he went into exile made her
seem attractive. She bore him a son, in the person of that brilliant
adventurer whom Charles afterward created Duke of Monmouth. Many
persons believe that Charles had married Lucy Walters, just as George IV.
may have married Mrs. Fitzherbert; yet there is not the slightest proof of it,
and it must be classed with popular legends.
There was also one Catherine Peg, or Kep, whose son was afterward
made Earl of Plymouth. It must be confessed that in his attachments to
English women Charles showed little care for rank or station. Lucy Walters
and Catherine Peg were very illiterate creatures.
In a way it was precisely this sort of preference that made Charles so
popular among the people. He seemed to make rank of no account, but
would chat in the most familiar and friendly way with any one whom he
happened to meet. His easy, democratic manner, coupled with the grace and
prestige of royalty, made friends for him all over England. The treasury
might be nearly bankrupt; the navy might be routed by the Dutch; the king
himself might be too much given to dissipation; but his people forgave him
all, because everybody knew that Charles would clap an honest citizen on
the back and joke with all who came to see him feed the swans in Regent's
Park.
The popular name for him was "Rowley," or "Old Rowley"—a nickname
of mysterious origin, though it is said to have been given him from a
fancied resemblance to a famous hunter in his stables. Perhaps it is the very

final test of popularity that a ruler should have a nickname known to every
one.
Cromwell's death roused all England to a frenzy of king-worship. The
Roundhead, General Monk, and his soldiers proclaimed Charles King of
England and escorted him to London in splendid state. That was a day when
national feeling reached a point such as never has been before or since.
Oughtred, the famous mathematician, died of joy when the royal emblems
were restored. Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, died, it is said, of
laughter at the people's wild delight—a truly Rabelaisian end.
There was the king once more; and England, breaking through its long
period of Puritanism, laughed and danced with more vivacity than ever the
French had shown. All the pipers and the players and panderers to vice, the
mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured into the
presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the pleasure that
his nature craved. Parliament voted seventy thousand pounds for a
memorial to Charles's father, but the irresponsible king spent the whole sum
on the women who surrounded him. His severest counselor, Lord
Clarendon, sent him a remonstrance.
"How can I build such a memorial," asked Charles, "when I don't know
where my father's remains are buried!"
He took money from the King of France to make war against the Dutch,
who had befriended him. It was the French king, too, who sent him that
insidious, subtle daughter of Brittany, Louise de Keroualle—Duchess of
Portsmouth—a diplomat in petticoats, who won the king's wayward
affections, and spied on what he did and said, and faithfully reported all of
it to Paris. She became the mother of the Duke of Lenox, and she was
feared and hated by the English more than any other of his mistresses. They
called her "Madam Carwell," and they seemed to have an instinct that she
was no mere plaything of his idle hours, but was like some strange exotic
serpent, whose poison might in the end sting the honor of England.
There is a pitiful little episode in the marriage of Charles with his
Portuguese bride, Catharine of Braganza. The royal girl came to him fresh
from the cloisters of her convent. There was something about her grace and
innocence that touched the dissolute monarch, who was by no means
without a heart. For a time he treated her with great respect, and she was
happy. At last she began to notice about her strange faces—faces that were

evil, wanton, or overbold. The court became more and more a seat of
reckless revelry.
Finally Catharine was told that the Duchess of Cleveland—that splendid
termagant, Barbara Villiers—had been appointed lady of the bedchamber.
She was told at the same time who this vixen was—that she was no fit
attendant for a virtuous woman, and that her three sons, the Dukes of
Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland, were also the sons of Charles.
Fluttered and frightened and dismayed, the queen hastened to her
husband and begged him not to put this slight upon her. A year or two
before, she had never dreamed that life contained such things as these; but
now it seemed to contain nothing else. Charles spoke sternly to her until she
burst into tears, and then he petted her and told her that her duty as a queen
compelled her to submit to many things which a lady in private life need
not endure.
After a long and poignant struggle with her own emotions the little
Portuguese yielded to the wishes of her lord. She never again reproached
him. She even spoke with kindness to his favorites and made him feel that
she studied his happiness alone. Her gentleness affected him so that he
always spoke to her with courtesy and real friendship. When the Protestant
mobs sought to drive her out of England he showed his courage and
manliness by standing by her and refusing to allow her to be molested.
Indeed, had Charles been always at his best he would have had a very
different name in history. He could be in every sense a king. He had a keen
knowledge of human nature. Though he governed England very badly, he
never governed it so badly as to lose his popularity.
The epigram of Rochester, written at the king's own request, was
singularly true of Charles. No man relied upon his word, yet men loved
him. He never said anything that was foolish, and he very seldom did
anything that was wise; yet his easy manners and gracious ways endeared
him to those who met him.
One can find no better picture of his court than that which Sir Walter
Scott has drawn so vividly in Peveril of the Peak; or, if one wishes first-
hand evidence, it can be found in the diaries of Evelyn and of Samuel
Pepys. In them we find the rakes and dicers, full of strange oaths, deep
drunkards, vile women and still viler men, all striving for the royal favor
and offering the filthiest lures, amid routs and balls and noisy

entertainments, of which it is recorded that more than once some woman
gave birth to a child among the crowd of dancers.
No wonder that the little Portuguese queen kept to herself and did not let
herself be drawn into this swirling, roaring, roistering saturnalia. She had
less influence even than Moll Davis, whom Charles picked out of a coffee-
house, and far less than "Madam Carwell," to whom it is reported that a
great English nobleman once presented pearls to the value of eight thousand
pounds in order to secure her influence in a single stroke of political
business.
Of all the women who surrounded Charles there was only one who cared
anything for him or for England. The rest were all either selfish or
treacherous or base. This one exception has been so greatly written of, both
in fiction and in history, as to make it seem almost unnecessary to add
another word; yet it may well be worth while to separate the fiction from
the fact and to see how much of the legend of Eleanor Gwyn is true.
The fanciful story of her birthplace is most surely quite unfounded. She
was not the daughter of a Welsh officer, but of two petty hucksters who had
their booth in the lowest precincts of London. In those days the Strand was
partly open country, and as it neared the city it showed the mansions of the
gentry set in their green-walled parks. At one end of the Strand, however,
was Drury Lane, then the haunt of criminals and every kind of wretch,
while nearer still was the notorious Coal Yard, where no citizen dared go
unarmed.
Within this dreadful place children were kidnapped and trained to various
forms of vice. It was a school for murderers and robbers and prostitutes;
and every night when the torches flared it vomited forth its deadly spawn.
Here was the earliest home of Eleanor Gwyn, and out of this den of iniquity
she came at night to sell oranges at the entrance to the theaters. She was
stage-struck, and endeavored to get even a minor part in a play; but
Betterton, the famous actor, thrust her aside when she ventured to apply to
him.
It must be said that in everything that was external, except her beauty, she
fell short of a fastidious taste. She was intensely ignorant even for that time.
She spoke in a broad Cockney dialect. She had lived the life of the Coal
Yard, and, like Zola's Nana, she could never remember the time when she
had known the meaning of chastity.

Nell Gwyn was, in fact, a product of the vilest slums of London; and
precisely because she was this we must set her down as intrinsically a good
woman—one of the truest, frankest, and most right-minded of whom the
history of such women has anything to tell. All that external circumstances
could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she was not pushed
down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in their natures an
uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike Barbara Villiers or
Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither a harpy nor a foe to
England.
Charles is said first to have met her when he, incognito, with another
friend, was making the rounds of the theaters at night. The king spied her
glowing, nut-brown face in one of the boxes, and, forgetting his incognito,
went up and joined her. She was with her protector of the time, Lord
Buckhurst, who, of course, recognized his majesty.
Presently the whole party went out to a neighboring coffee-house, where
they drank and ate together. When it came time to pay the reckoning the
king found that he had no money, nor had his friend. Lord Buckhurst,
therefore, paid the bill, while Mistress Nell jeered at the other two, saying
that this was the most poverty-stricken party that she had ever met.
Charles did not lose sight of her. Her frankness and honest manner
pleased him. There came a time when she was known to be a mistress of the
king, and she bore a son, who was ennobled as the Duke of St. Albans, but
who did not live to middle age. Nell Gwyn was much with Charles; and
after his tempestuous scenes with Barbara Villiers, and the feeling of
dishonor which the Duchess of Portsmouth made him experience, the girl's
good English bluntness was a pleasure far more rare than sentiment.
Somehow, just as the people had come to mistrust "Madam Carwell," so
they came to like Nell Gwyn. She saw enough of Charles, and she liked him
well enough, to wish that he might do his duty by his people; and she alone
had the boldness to speak out what she thought. One day she found him
lolling in an arm-chair and complaining that the people were not satisfied.
"You can very easily satisfy them," said Nell Gwyn. "Dismiss your
women and attend to the proper business of a king."
Again, her heart was touched at the misfortunes of the old soldiers who
had fought for Charles and for his father during the Civil War, and who
were now neglected, while the treasury was emptied for French favorites,

and while the policy of England itself was bought and sold in France. Many
and many a time, when other women of her kind used their lures to get
jewels or titles or estates or actual heaps of money, Nell Gwyn besought the
king to aid these needy veterans. Because of her efforts Chelsea Hospital
was founded. Such money as she had she shared with the poor and with
those who had fought for her royal lover.
As I have said, she is a historical type of the woman who loses her
physical purity, yet who retains a sense of honor and of honesty which
nothing can take from her. There are not many such examples, and therefore
this one is worth remembering.
Of anecdotes concerning her there are many, but not often has their real
import been detected. If she could twine her arms about the monarch's neck
and transport him in a delirium of passion, this was only part of what she
did. She tried to keep him right and true and worthy of his rank; and after he
had ceased to care much for her as a lover he remembered that she had been
faithful in many other things.
Then there came the death-bed scene, when Charles, in his inimitable
manner, apologized to those about him because he was so long in dying. A
far sincerer sentence was that which came from his heart, as he cried out, in
the very pangs of death:
"Do not let poor Nelly starve!"

MAURICE OF SAXONY AND ADRIENNE
LECOUVREUR
It is an old saying that to every womanly woman self-sacrifice is almost a
necessity of her nature. To make herself of small account as compared with
the one she loves; to give freely of herself, even though she may receive
nothing in return; to suffer, and yet to feel an inner poignant joy in all this
suffering—here is a most wonderful trait of womanhood. Perhaps it is akin
to the maternal instinct; for to the mother, after she has felt the throb of a
new life within her, there is no sacrifice so great and no anguish so keen
that she will not welcome it as the outward sign and evidence of her
illimitable love.
In most women this spirit of self-sacrifice is checked and kept within
ordinary bounds by the circumstances of their lives. In many small things
they do yield and they do suffer; yet it is not in yielding and in suffering
that they find their deepest joy.
There are some, however, who seem to have been born with an abnormal
capacity for enduring hardship and mental anguish; so that by a sort of
contradiction they find their happiness in sorrow. Such women are endowed
with a remarkable degree of sensibility. They feel intensely. In moments of
grief and disappointment, and even of despair, there steals over them a sort
of melancholy pleasure. It is as if they loved dim lights and mournful music
and scenes full of sad suggestion.
If everything goes well with them, they are unwilling to believe that such
good fortune will last. If anything goes wrong with them, they are sure that
this is only the beginning of something even worse. The music of their lives
is written in a minor key.
Now, for such women as these, the world at large has very little charity. It
speaks slightingly of them as "agonizers." It believes that they are "fond of
making scenes." It regards as an affectation something that is really
instinctive and inevitable. Unless such women are beautiful and young and
charming they are treated badly; and this is often true in spite of all their

natural attractiveness, for they seem to court ill usage as if they were saying
frankly:
"Come, take us! We will give you everything and ask for nothing. We do
not expect true and enduring love. Do not be constant or generous or even
kind. We know that we shall suffer. But, none the less, in our sorrow there
will be sweetness, and even in our abasement we shall feel a sort of
triumph."
In history there is one woman who stands out conspicuously as a type of
her melancholy sisterhood, one whose life was full of disappointment even
when she was most successful, and of indignity even when she was most
sought after and admired. This woman was Adrienne Lecouvreur, famous in
the annals of the stage, and still more famous in the annals of unrequited—
or, at any rate, unhappy—love.
Her story is linked with that of a man no less remarkable than herself, a
hero of chivalry, a marvel of courage, of fascination, and of irresponsibility.
Adrienne Lecouvreur—her name was originally Couvreur—was born
toward the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of
Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her
father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth, we
know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable
temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long
afterward, he died, raving and yelling like a maniac.
Adrienne was brought up at the wash-tub, and became accustomed to a
wandering life, in which she went from one town to another. What she had
inherited from her mother is, of course, not known; but she had all her
father's strangely pessimistic temper, softened only by the fact that she was
a girl. From her earliest years she was unhappy; yet her unhappiness was
largely of her own choosing. Other girls of her own station met life
cheerfully, worked away from dawn till dusk, and then had their moments
of amusement, and even jollity, with their companions, after the fashion of
all children. But Adrienne Lecouvreur was unhappy because she chose to
be. It was not the wash-tub that made her so, for she had been born to it; nor
was it the half-mad outbreaks of her father, because to her, at least, he was
not unkind. Her discontent sprang from her excessive sensibility.
Indeed, for a peasant child she had reason to think herself far more
fortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition was

awakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began to learn
and to recite poems—learning them, as has been said, "between the wash-
tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to the admiration of older and
wiser people than she. Even at ten she was a very beautiful child, with great
lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion, and a lovely form, while she had
the further gift of a voice that thrilled the listener and, when she chose,
brought tears to every eye. She was, indeed, a natural elocutionist, knowing
by instinct all those modulations of tone and varied cadences which go to
the hearer's heart.
It was very like Adrienne Lecouvreur to memorize only such poems as
were mournful, just as in after life she could win success upon the stage
only in tragic parts. She would repeat with a sort of ecstasy the pathetic
poems that were then admired; and she was soon able to give up her menial
work, because many people asked her to their houses so that they could
listen to the divinely beautiful voice charged with the emotion which was
always at her command.
When she was thirteen her father moved to Paris, where she was placed
at school—a very humble school in a very humble quarter of the city. Yet
even there her genius showed itself at that early age. A number of children
and young people, probably influenced by Adrienne, formed themselves
into a theatrical company from the pure love of acting. A friendly grocer let
them have an empty store-room for their performances, and in this store-
room Adrienne Lecouvreur first acted in a tragedy by Corneille, assuming
the part of leading woman.
Her genius for the stage was like the genius of Napoleon for war. She had
had no teaching. She had never been inside of any theater; and yet she
delivered the magnificent lines with all the power and fire and effectiveness
of a most accomplished actress. People thronged to see her and to feel the
tempest of emotion which shook her as she sustained her part, which for the
moment was as real to her as life itself.
At first only the people of the neighborhood knew anything about these
amateur performances; but presently a lady of rank, one Mme. du Gue,
came out of curiosity and was fascinated by the little actress. Mme. du Gue
offered the spacious courtyard of her own house, and fitted it with some of
the appurtenances of a theater. From that moment the fame of Adrienne
spread throughout all Paris. The courtyard was crowded by gentlemen and

ladies, by people of distinction from the court, and at last even by actors
and actresses from the Comedie Franchise.
It is, in fact, a remarkable tribute to Adrienne that in her thirteenth year
she excited so much jealousy among the actors of the Comedie that they
evoked the law against her. Theaters required a royal license, and of course
poor little Adrienne's company had none. Hence legal proceedings were
begun, and the most famous actresses in Paris talked of having these clever
children imprisoned! Upon this the company sought the precincts of the
Temple, where no legal warrant could be served without the express order
of the king himself.
There for a time the performances still went on. Finally, as the other
children were not geniuses, but merely boys and girls in search of fun, the
little company broke up. Its success, however, had determined for ever the
career of Adrienne. With her beautiful face, her lithe and exquisite figure,
her golden voice, and her instinctive art, it was plain enough that her future
lay upon the stage; and so at fourteen or fifteen she began where most
actresses leave off—accomplished and attractive, and having had a practical
training in her profession.
Diderot, in that same century, observed that the truest actor is one who
does not feel his part at all, but produces his effects by intellectual effort
and intelligent observation. Behind the figure on the stage, torn with
passion or rollicking with mirth, there must always be the cool and
unemotional mind which directs and governs and controls. This same
theory was both held and practised by the late Benoit Constant Coquelin. To
some extent it was the theory of Garrick and Fechter and Edwin Booth;
though it was rejected by the two Keans, and by Edwin Forrest, who
entered so throughly into the character which he assumed, and who let loose
such tremendous bursts of passion that other actors dreaded to support him
on the stage in such parts as Spartacus and Metamora.
It is needless to say that a girl like Adrienne Lecouvreur flung herself
with all the intensity of her nature into every role she played. This was the
greatest secret of her success; for, with her, nature rose superior to art. On
the other hand, it fixed her dramatic limitations, for it barred her out of
comedy. Her melancholy, morbid disposition was in the fullest sympathy
with tragic heroines; but she failed when she tried to represent the lighter
moods and the merry moments of those who welcome mirth. She could

counterfeit despair, and unforced tears would fill her eyes; but she could not
laugh and romp and simulate a gaiety that was never hers.
Adrienne would have been delighted to act at one of the theaters in Paris;
but they were closed to her through jealousy. She went into the provinces,
in the eastern part of France, and for ten years she was a leading lady there
in many companies and in many towns. As she blossomed into womanhood
there came into her life the love which was to be at once a source of the
most profound interest and of the most intense agony.
It is odd that all her professional success never gave her any happiness.
The life of the actress who traveled from town to town, the crude and coarse
experiences which she had to undergo, the disorder and the unsettled mode
of living, all produced in her a profound disgust. She was of too exquisite a
fiber to live in such a way, especially in a century when the refinements of
existence were for the very few.
She speaks herself of "obligatory amusements, the insistence of men, and
of love affairs." Yet how could such a woman as Adrienne Lecouvreur keep
herself from love affairs? The motion of the stage and its mimic griefs
satisfied her only while she was actually upon the boards. Love offered her
an emotional excitement that endured and that was always changing. It was
"the profoundest instinct of her being"; and she once wrote: "What could
one do in the world without loving?"
Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that she might
be unhappy. There was a strange twist in her mind. Men who were
honorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly. Men
who were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed to choose by
a sort of perverse instinct. Perhaps the explanation of it is that during those
ten years, though she had many lovers, she never really loved. She sought
excitement, passion, and after that the mournfulness which comes when
passion dies. Thus, one man after another came into her life—some of them
promising marriage—and she bore two children, whose fathers were
unknown, or at least uncertain. But, after all, one can scarcely pity her,
since she had not yet in reality known that great passion which comes but
once in life. So far she had learned only a sort of feeble cynicism, which she
expressed in letters and in such sayings as these:
"There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again. My
experiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason."

"I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more of
it for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don't wish either to die or to go
mad."
Yet she also said: "I know too well that no one dies of grief."
She had had, indeed, some very unfortunate experiences. Men of rank
had loved her and had then cast her off. An actor, one Clavel, would have
married her, but she would not accept his offer. A magistrate in Strasburg
promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accept him, he wrote
to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of his family and make a
more advantageous alliance. And so she was alternately caressed and
repulsed—a mere plaything; and yet this was probably all that she really
needed at the time—something to stir her, something to make her mournful
or indignant or ashamed.
It was inevitable that at last Adrienne Lecouvreur should appear in Paris.
She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even those who
were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her due consideration. In
1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, she became a member of the
Comedie Franchise. There she made an immediate and most brilliant
impression. She easily took the leading place. She was one of the glories of
Paris, for she became the fashion outside the theater. For the first time the
great classic plays were given, not in the monotonous singsong which had
become a sort of theatrical convention, but with all the fire and naturalness
of life.
Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actors
and of actresses. Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.
Voltaire wrote poems in her honor. To be invited to her dinners was almost
like receiving a decoration from the king. She ought to have been happy, for
she had reached the summit of her profession and something more.
Yet still she was unhappy. In all her letters one finds a plaintive tone, a
little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature had been changed.
No longer, however, did she throw herself away upon dullards or brutes. An
English peer—Lord Peterborough—not realizing that she was different
from other actresses of that loose-lived age, said to her coarsely at his first
introduction:
"Come now! Show me lots of wit and lots of love."

The remark was characteristic of the time. Yet Adrienne had learned at
least one thing, and that was the discontent which came from light affairs.
She had thrown herself away too often. If she could not love with her entire
being, if she could not give all that was in her to be given, whether of her
heart or mind or soul, then she would love no more at all.
At this time there came to Paris a man remarkable in his own century,
and one who afterward became almost a hero of romance. This was
Maurice, Comte de Saxe, as the French called him, his German name and
title being Moritz, Graf von Sachsen, while we usually term him, in
English, Marshal Saxe. Maurice de Saxe was now, in 1721, entering his
twenty-fifth year. Already, though so young, his career had been a strange
one; and it was destined to be still more remarkable. He was the natural son
of Duke Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became King of Poland, and who
is known in history as Augustus the Strong.
Augustus was a giant in stature and in strength, handsome, daring,
unscrupulous, and yet extremely fascinating. His life was one of revelry and
fighting and display. When in his cups he would often call for a horseshoe
and twist it into a knot with his powerful fingers. Many were his mistresses;
but the one for whom he cared the most was a beautiful and high-spirited
Swedish girl of rank, Aurora von Konigsmarck. She was descended from a
rough old field-marshal who in the Thirty Years' War had slashed and
sacked and pillaged and plundered to his heart's content. From him Aurora
von Konigsmarck seemed to have inherited a high spirit and a sort of
lawlessness which charmed the stalwart Augustus of Poland.
Their son, Maurice de Saxe, inherited everything that was good in his
parents, and a great deal that was less commendable. As a mere child of
twelve he had insisted on joining the army of Prince Eugene, and had seen
rough service in a very strenuous campaign. Two years later he showed
such daring on the battle-field that Prince Eugene summoned him and paid
him a compliment under the form of a rebuke.
"Young man," he said, "you must not mistake mere recklessness for
valor."
Before he was twenty he had attained the stature and strength of his royal
father; and, to prove it, he in his turn called for a horseshoe, which he
twisted and broke in his fingers. He fought on the side of the Russians and
Poles, and again against the Turks, everywhere displaying high courage and

also genius as a commander; for he never lost his self-possession amid the
very blackest danger, but possessed, as Carlyle says, "vigilance, foresight,
and sagacious precaution."
Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts that pleased,
with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting in so gallant a
soldier. His troops adored him and would follow wherever he might choose
to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men a magnetic power
resembling that of Napoleon in after years. In private life he was a hard
drinker and fond of every form of pleasure. Having no fortune of his own, a
marriage was arranged for him with the Countess von Loben, who was
immensely wealthy; but in three years he had squandered all her money
upon his pleasures, and had, moreover, got himself heavily in debt.
It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study military tactics. He
had fought hard against the French in the wars that were now ended; but his
chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and his reckless joviality made
him at once a universal favorite in Paris. To the perfumed courtiers, with
their laces and lovelocks and mincing ways, Maurice de Saxe came as a sort
of knight of old—jovial, daring, pleasure-loving. Even his broken French
was held to be quite charming; and to see him break a horseshoe with his
fingers threw every one into raptures.
No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.
Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a beautiful
woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she was "the
personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal of a dream
of love." Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of gold. Her eyes
were violet black. Her complexion was dazzling. But by the king's orders
she had been forced to marry a hunchback—a man whose very limbs were
so weakened by disease and evil living that they would often fail to support
him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing, screaming mass of ill-
looking flesh.
It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at his
abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her eyes fell
on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from her
bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade the
sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she was not
alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her husband, having

won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she had been insulted.
But it was not she who was destined to win and hold the love of Maurice de
Saxe.
Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to dine
with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her on the
stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very much of a
soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so utterly dissimilar,
leaped together, as it were, through the indescribable attraction of opposites.
He was big and powerful; she was small and fragile. He was merry, and full
of quips and jests; she was reserved and melancholy. Each felt in the other a
need supplied.
At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the man
to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full surrender. In
one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It appeared to her as if no
man had ever laid his hand upon her until that moment. She cried out:
"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live!"
It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck of this
impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and the unselfish
devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne Lecouvreur never
loved another man and never even looked at any other man with the
slightest interest. For nine long years the two were bound together, though
there were strange events to ruffle the surface of their love.
Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition to
be a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which in after years
was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliant victory of
Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tired of recalling.
Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and a certain
restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt that to remain in
the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the whole of a man's career.
Then the Grand Duchy of Courland—at that time a vassal state of
Poland, now part of Russia—sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eager to
secure its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and the chief
of a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was needed to

carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke—the Grand Duchess Anna,
niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia—as soon as she had
met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to acquire the duchy if he
would only marry her. He did not utterly refuse. Still another woman of
high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Peter the Great's
daughter, made him very much the same proposal.
Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man like
Maurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of them
inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the first was
a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman empresses
who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described as indolent
and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in the world was
love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave them over to
favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people. She was
unquestionably endowed with the magnetic gift of winning hearts.
Adrienne, who was left behind in Paris, knew very little of what was
going on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that if her
lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other was that
without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he would then
return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. It proved the
height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might, Maurice should be
Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. She gathered together her
whole fortune, sold every jewel that she possessed, and sent her lover the
sum of nearly a million francs.
This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because of
various intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne of Courland, and
he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, and without even the
grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed and raged over his ill luck.
She merely soothed and petted him, though she had heard that he had
thought of marrying another woman to secure the dukedom. In one of her
letters she bursts out with the pitiful exclamation:
I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry out against
such treachery? This man surely ought to know me—he ought to love me.
Oh, my God! What are we—what ARE we?
But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, though
there were frightful scenes between them—times when he cruelly

reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts of
despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or less obscure in
parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the court—facile, feline,
licentious, and eager for delights—resolved that she would win the love of
Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win it openly and without any sense of
shame. Maurice himself at times, when the tears of Adrienne proved
wearisome, flirted with the duchess.
Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival knew
it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in the place
where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be a gala
performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne, of course,
in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a large number of her
lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible, to break off the play.
Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchess arrayed herself in jewels
and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box, where she could watch the
coming storm and gloat over the discomfiture of her rival.
When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproar
began. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devised against
her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-like majesty of her
bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even the hired lackeys
were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly across the stage and
fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the three insulting lines
which came to her at that moment of the play:

I am not of those women void of shame,
Who, savoring in crime the joys of peace,
Harden their faces till they cannot blush!

The whole house rose and burst forth into tremendous applause. Adrienne
had won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidation and
hurried from the theater.
But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds were
committed by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was a
common trade. To remove a rival was as usual a thing in the eighteenth
century as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.
Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne
Lecouvreur was acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power and
instinctive art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightful pains.

Her anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet she had the
courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and was carried home.
Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than her life
had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and also a Jesuit
priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless she would declare
that she repented of her theatrical career. She stubbornly refused, since she
believed that to be the greatest actress of her time was not a sin. Yet still the
priest insisted.
Then came the final moment.
"Weary and revolting against this death, this destiny, she stretched her
arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stood near by
and cried—her last cry of passion:
"'There is my world, my hope—yes, and my God!'"
The bust was one of Maurice de Saxe.

THE STORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD
STUART
The royal families of Europe are widely known, yet not all of them are
equally renowned. Thus, the house of Romanoff, although comparatively
young, stands out to the mind with a sort of barbaric power, more vividly
than the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which is the oldest reigning family in
Europe, tracing its beginnings backward until they are lost in the Dark
Ages. The Hohenzollerns of Prussia are comparatively modern, so far as
concerns their royalty. The offshoots of the Bourbons carry on a very proud
tradition in the person of the King of Spain, although France, which has
been ruled by so many members of the family, will probably never again
behold a Bourbon king. The deposed Braganzas bear a name which is
ancient, but which has a somewhat tinsel sound.
The Bonapartes, of course, are merely parvenus, and they have had the
good taste to pretend to no antiquity of birth. The first Napoleon, dining at a
table full of monarchs, when he heard one of them deferentially alluding to
the Bonaparte family as being very old and noble, exclaimed:
"Pish! My nobility dates from the day of Marengo!"
And the third Napoleon, in announcing his coming marriage with Mlle.
de Montijo, used the very word "parvenu" in speaking of himself and of his
family. His frankness won the hearts of the French people and helped to
reconcile them to a marriage in which the bride was barely noble.
In English history there are two great names to conjure by, at least to the
imaginative. One is Plantagenet, which seems to contain within itself the
very essence of all that is patrician, magnificent, and royal. It calls to
memory at once the lion-hearted Richard, whose short reign was replete
with romance in England and France and Austria and the Holy Land.
But perhaps a name of greater influence is that which links the royal
family of Britain today with the traditions of the past, and which summons
up legend and story and great deeds of history. This is the name of Stuart,
about which a whole volume might be written to recall its suggestions and
its reminiscences.

The first Stuart (then Stewart) of whom anything is known got his name
from the title of "Steward of Scotland," which remained in the family for
generations, until the sixth of the line, by marriage with Princess Marjory
Bruce, acquired the Scottish crown. That was in the early years of the
fourteenth century; and finally, after the death of Elizabeth of England, her
rival's son, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England, united under one crown
two kingdoms that had so long been at almost constant war.
It is almost characteristic of the Scot that, having small territory, little
wealth, and a seat among his peers that is almost ostentatiously humble, he
should bit by bit absorb the possessions of all the rest and become their
master. Surely, the proud Tudors, whose line ended with Elizabeth, must
have despised the "Stewards," whose kingdom was small and bleak and
cold, and who could not control their own vassals.
One can imagine also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of the
English court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedant
and bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that of
Elizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was very far
from being a fool.
In his appearance James was not unlike Abraham Lincoln—an unkingly
figure; and yet, like Lincoln, when occasion required it he could rise to the
dignity which makes one feel the presence of a king. He was the only Stuart
who lacked anything in form or feature or external grace. His son, Charles
I., was perhaps one of the worst rulers that England has ever had; yet his
uprightness of life, his melancholy yet handsome face, his graceful bearing,
and the strong religious element in his character, together with the fact that
he was put to death after being treacherously surrendered to his enemies—
all these have combined to make almost a saint of him. There are
Englishmen to-day who speak of him as "the martyr king," and who, on
certain days of the year, say prayers that beg the Lord's forgiveness because
of Charles's execution.
The members of the so-called League of the White Rose, founded to
perpetuate English allegiance to the direct line of Stuarts, do many things
that are quite absurd. They refuse to pray for the present King of England
and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is the true ruler of
Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentiment which lingers
among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts were the last kings of

England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the grace of Parliament.
As a matter of fact, the present reigning family in England is glad to derive
its ancient strain of royal blood through a Stuart—descended on the distaff
side from James I., and winding its way through Hanover.
This sentiment for the Stuarts is a thing entirely apart from reason and
belongs to the realm of poetry and romance; yet so strong is it that it has
shown itself in the most inconsistent fashion. For instance, Sir Walter Scott
was a devoted adherent of the house of Hanover. When George IV. visited
Edinburgh, Scott was completely carried away by his loyal enthusiasm. He
could not see that the man before him was a drunkard and braggart. He
viewed him as an incarnation of all the noble traits that ought to hedge
about a king. He snatched up a wine-glass from which George had just been
drinking and carried it away to be an object of reverence for ever after.
Nevertheless, in his heart, and often in his speech, Scott seemed to be a high
Tory, and even a Jacobite.
There are precedents for this. The Empress Eugenie used often to say
with a laugh that she was the only true royalist at the imperial court of
France. That was well enough for her in her days of flightiness and frivolity.
No one, however, accused Queen Victoria of being frivolous, and she was
not supposed to have a strong sense of humor. None the less, after listening
to the skirling of the bagpipes and to the romantic ballads which were sung
in Scotland she is said to have remarked with a sort of sigh:
"Whenever I hear those ballads I feel that England belongs really to the
Stuarts!"
Before Queen Victoria was born, when all the sons of George III. were
childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a
family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said many
things, and among them this was the most striking:
"Why don't you call the Stuarts back to England? They couldn't possibly
make a worse mess of it than our fellows have!"
But he yielded to persuasion and married. From this marriage came
Victoria, who had the sacred drop of Stuart blood which gave England to
the Hanoverians; and she was to redeem the blunders and tyrannies of both
houses.
The fascination of the Stuarts, which has been carried overseas to
America and the British dominions, probably began with the striking

history of Mary Queen of Scots. Her brilliancy and boldness and beauty,
and especially the pathos of her end, have made us see only her intense
womanliness, which in her own day was the first thing that any one
observed in her. So, too, with Charles I., romantic figure and knightly
gentleman. One regrets his death upon the scaffold, even though his
execution was necessary to the growth of freedom.
Many people are no less fascinated by Charles II., that very different
type, with his gaiety, his good-fellowship, and his easy-going ways. It is not
surprising that his people, most of whom never saw him, were very fond of
him, and did not know that he was selfish, a loose liver, and almost a vassal
of the king of France.
So it is not strange that the Stuarts, with all their arts and graces, were
very hard to displace. James II., with the aid of the French, fought hard
before the British troops in Ireland broke the backs of both his armies and
sent him into exile. Again in 1715—an episode perpetuated in Thackeray's
dramatic story of Henry Esmond—came the son of James to take advantage
of the vacancy caused by the death of Queen Anne. But it is perhaps to this
claimant's son, the last of the militant Stuarts, that more chivalrous feeling
has been given than to any other.
To his followers he was the Young Chevalier, the true Prince of Wales; to
his enemies, the Whigs and the Hanoverians, he was "the Pretender." One
of the most romantic chapters of history is the one which tells of that last
brilliant dash which he made upon the coast of Scotland, landing with but a
few attendants and rejecting the support of a French army.
"It is not with foreigners," he said, "but with my own loyal subjects, that I
wish to regain the kingdom for my father."
It was a daring deed, and the spectacular side of it has been often
commemorated, especially in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley. There we see the
gallant prince moving through a sort of military panorama. Most of the
British troops were absent in Flanders, and the few regiments that could be
mustered to meet him were appalled by the ferocity and reckless courage of
the Highlanders, who leaped down like wildcats from their hills and flung
themselves with dirk and sword upon the British cannon.
We see Sir John Cope retiring at Falkirk, and the astonishing victory of
Prestonpans, where disciplined British troops fled in dismay through the
morning mist, leaving artillery and supplies behind them. It is Scott again

who shows us the prince, master of Edinburgh for a time, while the white
rose of Stuart royalty held once more the ancient keep above the Scottish
capital. Then we see the Chevalier pressing southward into England, where
he hoped to raise an English army to support his own. But his Highlanders
cared nothing for England, and the English—even the Catholic gentry—
would not rise to support his cause.
Personally, he had every gift that could win allegiance. Handsome, high-
tempered, and brave, he could also control his fiery spirit and listen to
advice, however unpalatable it might be.
The time was favorable. The British troops had been defeated on the
Continent by Marshal Saxe, of whom I have already written, and by
Marshal d'Estrees. George II. was a king whom few respected. He could
scarcely speak anything but German. He grossly ill-treated his wife. It is
said that on one occasion, in a fit of temper, he actually kicked the prime
minister. Not many felt any personal loyalty to him, and he spent most of
his time away from England in his other domain of Hanover.
But precisely here was a reason why Englishmen were willing to put up
with him. As between him and the brilliant Stuart there would have been no
hesitation had the choice been merely one of men; but it was believed that
the return of the Stuarts meant the return of something like absolute
government, of taxation without sanction of law, and of religious
persecution. Under the Hanoverian George the English people had begun to
exercise a considerable measure of self-government. Sharp opposition in
Parliament compelled him time and again to yield; and when he was in
Hanover the English were left to work out the problem of free government.
Hence, although Prince Charles Edward fascinated all who met him, and
although a small army was raised for his support, still the unromantic,
common-sense Englishmen felt that things were better than in the days gone
by, and most of them refused to take up arms for the cause which
sentimentally they favored. Therefore, although the Chevalier stirred all
England and sent a thrill through the officers of state in London, his soldiers
gradually deserted, and the Scots insisted on returning to their own country.
Although the Stuart troops reached a point as far south as Derby, they were
soon pushed backward into Scotland, pursued by an army of about nine
thousand men under the Duke of Cumberland, son of George II.

Cumberland was no soldier; he had been soundly beaten by the French
on the famous field of Fontenoy. Yet he had firmness and a sort of
overmastering brutality, which, with disciplined troops and abundant
artillery, were sufficient to win a victory over the untrained Highlanders.
When the battle came five thousand of these mountaineers went roaring
along the English lines, with the Chevalier himself at their head. For a
moment there was surprise. The Duke of Cumberland had been drinking so
heavily that he could give no verbal orders. One of his officers, however, is
said to have come to him in his tent, where he was trying to play cards.
"What disposition shall we make of the prisoners?" asked the officer.
The duke tried to reply, but his utterance was very thick.
"No quarter!" he was believed to say.
The officer objected and begged that such an order as that should be
given in writing. The duke rolled over and seized a sheaf of playing-cards.
Pulling one out, he scrawled the necessary order, and that was taken to the
commanders in the field.
The Highlanders could not stand the cannon fire, and the English won.
Then the fury of the common soldiery broke loose upon the country.
There was a reign of fantastic and fiendish brutality. One provost of the
town was violently kicked for a mild remonstrance about the destruction of
the Episcopalian meeting-house; another was condemned to clean out dirty
stables. Men and women were whipped and tortured on slight suspicion or
to extract information. Cumberland frankly professed his contempt and
hatred of the people among whom he found himself, but he savagely
punished robberies committed by private soldiers for their own profit.
"Mild measures will not do," he wrote to Newcastle.
When leaving the North in July, he said:
"All the good we have done is but a little blood-letting, which has only
weakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble to fear that this
vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our family."
Such was the famous battle of Culloden, fought in 1746, and putting a
final end to the hopes of all the Stuarts. As to Cumberland's order for "No
quarter," if any apology can be made for such brutality, it must be found in
the fact that the Highland chiefs had on their side agreed to spare no
captured enemy.

The battle has also left a name commonly given to the nine of diamonds,
which is called "the curse of Scotland," because it is said that on that card
Cumberland wrote his bloodthirsty order.
Such, in brief, was the story of Prince Charlie's gallant attempt to restore
the kingdom of his ancestors. Even when defeated, he would not at once
leave Scotland. A French squadron appeared off the coast near Edinburgh. It
had been sent to bring him troops and a large supply of money, but he
turned his back upon it and made his way into the Highlands on foot,
closely pursued by English soldiers and Lowland spies.
This part of his career is in reality the most romantic of all. He was
hunted closely, almost as by hounds. For weeks he had only such sleep as
he could snatch during short periods of safety, and there were times when
his pursuers came within an inch of capturing him. But never in his life
were his spirits so high.
It was a sort of life that he had never seen before, climbing the mighty
rocks, and listening to the thunder of the cataracts, among which he often
slept, with only one faithful follower to guard him. The story of his escape
is almost incredible, but he laughed and drank and rolled upon the grass
when he was free from care. He hobnobbed with the most suspicious-
looking caterans, with whom he drank the smoky brew of the North, and
lived as he might on fish and onions and bacon and wild fowl, with an
appetite such as he had never known at the luxurious court of Versailles or
St.-Germain.
After the battle of Culloden the prince would have been captured had not
a Scottish girl named Flora Macdonald met him, caused him to be dressed
in the clothes of her waiting-maid, and thus got him off to the Isle of Skye.
There for a time it was impossible to follow him; and there the two lived
almost alone together. Such a proximity could not fail to stir the romantic
feeling of one who was both a youth and a prince. On the other hand, no
thought of love-making seems to have entered Flora's mind. If, however, we
read Campbell's narrative very closely we can see that Prince Charles made
every advance consistent with a delicate remembrance of her sex and
services.
It seems to have been his thought that if she cared for him, then the two
might well love; and he gave her every chance to show him favor. The
youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together in the

long, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the sea. The
prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumble his golden hair
with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresses which she preserved
to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But to the last he was either too high
or too low for her, according to her own modest thought. He was a royal
prince, the heir to a throne, or else he was a boy with whom she might play
quite fancy-free. A lover he could not be—so pure and beautiful was her
thought of him.
These were perhaps the most delightful days of all his life, as they were a
beautiful memory in hers. In time he returned to France and resumed his
place amid the intrigues that surrounded that other Stuart prince who styled
himself James III., and still kept up the appearance of a king in exile. As he
watched the artifice and the plotting of these make-believe courtiers he may
well have thought of his innocent companion of the Highland wilds.
As for Flora, she was arrested and imprisoned for five months on English
vessels of war. After her release she was married, in 1750; and she and her
husband sailed for the American colonies just before the Revolution. In that
war Macdonald became a British officer and served against his adopted
countrymen. Perhaps because of this reason Flora returned alone to
Scotland, where she died at the age of sixty-eight.
The royal prince who would have given her his easy love lived a life of
far less dignity in the years that followed his return to France. There was no
more hope of recovering the English throne. For him there were left only
the idle and licentious diversions of such a court as that in which his father
lived.
At the death of James III., even this court was disintegrated, and Prince
Charles led a roving life under the title of Earl of Albany. In his wanderings
he met Louise Marie, the daughter of a German prince, Gustavus Adolphus
of Stolberg. She was only nineteen years of age when she first felt the
fascination that he still possessed; but it was an unhappy marriage for the
girl when she discovered that her husband was a confirmed drunkard.
Not long after, in fact, she found her life with him so utterly intolerable
that she persuaded the Pope to allow her a formal separation. The pontiff
intrusted her to her husband's brother, Cardinal York, who placed her in a
convent and presently removed her to his own residence in Rome.

Here begins another romance. She was often visited by Vittorio Alfieri,
the great Italian poet and dramatist. Alfieri was a man of wealth. In early
years he divided his time into alternate periods during which he either
studied hard in civil and canonical law, or was a constant attendant upon the
race-course, or rushed aimlessly all over Europe without any object except
to wear out the post-horses which he used in relays over hundreds of miles
of road. His life, indeed, was eccentric almost to insanity; but when he had
met the beautiful and lonely Countess of Albany there came over him a
striking change. She influenced him for all that was good, and he used to
say that he owed her all that was best in his dramatic works.
Sixteen years after her marriage her royal husband died, a worn-out,
bloated wreck of one who had been as a youth a model of knightliness and
manhood. During his final years he had fallen to utter destitution, and there
was either a touch of half contempt or a feeling of remote kinship in the act
of George III., who bestowed upon the prince an annual pension of four
thousand pounds. It showed most plainly that England was now
consolidated under Hanoverian rule.
When Cardinal York died, in 1807, there was no Stuart left in the male
line; and the countess was the last to bear the royal Scottish name of
Albany.
After the prince's death his widow is said to have been married to Alfieri,
and for the rest of her life she lived in Florence, though Alfieri died nearly
twenty-one years before her.
Here we have seen a part of the romance which attaches itself to the
name of Stuart—in the chivalrous young prince, leading his Highlanders
against the bayonets of the British, lolling idly among the Hebrides, or
fallen, at the last, to be a drunkard and the husband of an unwilling consort,
who in her turn loved a famous poet. But it is this Stuart, after all, of whom
we think when we hear the bagpipes skirling "Over the Water to Charlie" or
"Wha'll be King but Charlie?"
END OF VOLUME ONE

THE EMPRESS CATHARINE AND PRINCE
POTEMKIN
It has often been said that the greatest Frenchman who ever lived was in
reality an Italian. It might with equal truth be asserted that the greatest
Russian woman who ever lived was in reality a German. But the Emperor
Napoleon and the Empress Catharine II. resemble each other in something
else. Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, made himself so French
in sympathy and understanding as to be able to play upon the imagination
of all France as a great musician plays upon a splendid instrument, with
absolute sureness of touch and an ability to extract from it every one of its
varied harmonies. So the Empress Catharine of Russia—perhaps the
greatest woman who ever ruled a nation—though born of German parents,
became Russian to the core and made herself the embodiment of Russian
feeling and Russian aspiration.
At the middle of the eighteenth century Russia was governed by the
Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. In her own time, and for a
long while afterward, her real capacity was obscured by her apparent
indolence, her fondness for display, and her seeming vacillation; but now a
very high place is accorded her in the history of Russian rulers. She
softened the brutality that had reigned supreme in Russia. She patronized
the arts. Her armies twice defeated Frederick the Great and raided his
capital, Berlin. Had Elizabeth lived, she would probably have crushed him.
In her early years this imperial woman had been betrothed to Louis XV.
of France, but the match was broken off. Subsequently she entered into a
morganatic marriage and bore a son who, of course, could not be her heir.
In 1742, therefore, she looked about for a suitable successor, and chose her
nephew, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp.
Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so splendid a
future, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress next sought for a
girl who might marry the young prince and thus become the future Czarina.
She thought first of Frederick the Great's sister; but Frederick shrank from
this alliance, though it would have been of much advantage to him. He

loved his sister—indeed, she was one of the few persons for whom he ever
really cared. So he declined the offer and suggested instead the young
Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy of Anhalt-Zerbst.
The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of the semi-
barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.
The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized, half-
oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin veneer of French
elegance covered every form of brutality and savagery and lust. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Frederick the Great was unwilling to have his
sister plunged into such a life.
But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia of Anhalt-
Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young girl willingly
accepted, the more so as her mother practically commanded it. This mother
of hers was a grim, harsh German woman who had reared her daughter in
the strictest fashion, depriving her of all pleasure with a truly puritanical
severity. In the case of a different sort of girl this training would have
crushed her spirit; but the Princess Sophia, though gentle and refined in
manner, had a power of endurance which was toughened and strengthened
by the discipline she underwent.
And so in 1744, when she was but sixteen years of age, she was taken by
her mother to St. Petersburg. There she renounced the Lutheran faith and
was received into the Greek Church, changing her name to Catharine. Soon
after, with great magnificence, she was married to Prince Peter, and from
that moment began a career which was to make her the most powerful
woman in the world.
At this time a lady of the Russian court wrote down a description of
Catharine's appearance. She was fair-haired, with dark-blue eyes; and her
face, though never beautiful, was made piquant and striking by the fact that
her brows were very dark in contrast with her golden hair. Her complexion
was not clear, yet her look was a very pleasing one. She had a certain
diffidence of manner at first; but later she bore herself with such instinctive
dignity as to make her seem majestic, though in fact she was beneath the
middle size. At the time of her marriage her figure was slight and graceful;
only in after years did she become stout. Altogether, she came to St.
Petersburg an attractive, pure-minded German maiden, with a character

well disciplined, and possessing reserves of power which had not yet been
drawn upon.
Frederick the Great's forebodings, which had led him to withhold his
sister's hand, were almost immediately justified in the case of Catharine.
Her Russian husband revealed to her a mode of life which must have tried
her very soul. This youth was only seventeen—a mere boy in age, and yet a
full-grown man in the rank luxuriance of his vices. Moreover, he had
eccentricities which sometimes verged upon insanity. Too young to be
admitted to the councils of his imperial aunt, he occupied his time in ways
that were either ridiculous or vile.
Next to the sleeping-room of his wife he kept a set of kennels, with a
number of dogs, which he spent hours in drilling as if they had been
soldiers. He had a troop of rats which he also drilled. It was his delight to
summon a court martial of his dogs to try the rats for various military
offenses, and then to have the culprits executed, leaving their bleeding
carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day or night Catharine, hidden
in her chamber, could hear the yapping of the curs, the squeak of rats, and
the word of command given by her half-idiot husband.
When wearied of this diversion Peter would summon a troop of favorites,
both men and women, and with them he would drink deep of beer and
vodka, since from his early childhood he had been both a drunkard and a
debauchee. The whoops and howls and vile songs of his creatures could be
heard by Catharine; and sometimes he would stagger into her rooms,
accompanied by his drunken minions. With a sort of psychopathic
perversity he would insist on giving Catharine the most minute and
repulsive narratives of his amours, until she shrank from him with horror at
his depravity and came to loathe the sight of his bloated face, with its little,
twinkling, porcine eyes, his upturned nose and distended nostrils, and his
loose-hung, lascivious mouth. She was scarcely less repelled when a wholly
different mood would seize upon him and he would declare himself her
slave, attending her at court functions in the garb of a servant and
professing an unbounded devotion for his bride.
Catharine's early training and her womanly nature led her for a long time
to submit to the caprices of her husband. In his saner moments she would
plead with him and strive to interest him in something better than his dogs
and rats and venal mistresses; but Peter was incorrigible. Though he had

moments of sense and even of good feeling, these never lasted, and after
them he would plunge headlong into the most frantic excesses that his half-
crazed imagination could devise.
It is not strange that in course of time Catharine's strong good sense
showed her that she could do nothing with this creature. She therefore
gradually became estranged from him and set herself to the task of doing
those things which Peter was incapable of carrying out.
She saw that ever since the first awakening of Russia under Peter the
Great none of its rulers had been genuinely Russian, but had tried to force
upon the Russian people various forms of western civilization which were
alien to the national spirit. Peter the Great had striven to make his people
Dutch. Elizabeth had tried to make them French. Catharine, with a sure
instinct, resolved that they should remain Russian, borrowing what they
needed from other peoples, but stirred always by the Slavic spirit and
swayed by a patriotism that was their own. To this end she set herself to
become Russian. She acquired the Russian language patiently and
accurately. She adopted the Russian costume, appearing, except on state
occasions, in a simple gown of green, covering her fair hair, however, with
a cap powdered with diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such
native Russians as were gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through
them, the favor of the common people.
It would have been strange, however, had Catharine, the woman, escaped
the tainting influences that surrounded her on every side. The infidelities of
Peter gradually made her feel that she owed him nothing as his wife.
Among the nobles there were men whose force of character and of mind
attracted her inevitably. Chastity was a thing of which the average Russian
had no conception; and therefore it is not strange that Catharine, with her
intense and sensitive nature, should have turned to some of these for the
love which she had sought in vain from the half imbecile to whom she had
been married.
Much has been written of this side of her earlier and later life; yet, though
it is impossible to deny that she had favorites, one should judge very gently
the conduct of a girl so young and thrust into a life whence all the virtues
seemed to be excluded. She bore several children before her thirtieth year,
and it is very certain that a grave doubt exists as to their paternity. Among
the nobles of the court were two whose courage and virility specially

attracted her. The one with whom her name has been most often coupled
was Gregory Orloff. He and his brother, Alexis Orloff, were Russians of the
older type—powerful in frame, suave in manner except when roused, yet
with a tigerish ferocity slumbering underneath. Their power fascinated
Catharine, and it was currently declared that Gregory Orloff was her lover.
When she was in her thirty-second year her husband was proclaimed
Czar, after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. At first in some ways his
elevation seemed to sober him; but this period of sanity, like those which
had come to him before, lasted only a few weeks. Historians have given
him much credit for two great reforms that are connected with his name;
and yet the manner in which they were actually brought about is rather
ludicrous. He had shut himself up with his favorite revelers, and had
remained for several days drinking and carousing until he scarcely knew
enough to speak. At this moment a young officer named Gudovitch, who
was really loyal to the newly created Czar, burst into the banquet-hall,
booted and spurred and his eyes aflame with indignation. Standing before
Peter, his voice rang out with the tone of a battle trumpet, so that the sounds
of revelry were hushed.
"Peter Feodorovitch," he cried, "do you prefer these swine to those who
really wish to serve you? Is it in this way that you imitate the glories of
your ancestor, that illustrious Peter whom you have sworn to take as your
model? It will not be long before your people's love will be changed to
hatred. Rise up, my Czar! Shake off this lethargy and sloth. Prove that you
are worthy of the faith which I and others have given you so loyally!"
With these words Gudovitch thrust into Peter's trembling hand two
proclamations, one abolishing the secret bureau of police, which had
become an instrument of tyrannous oppression, and the other restoring to
the nobility many rights of which they had been deprived.
The earnestness and intensity of Gudovitch temporarily cleared the brain
of the drunken Czar. He seized the papers, and, without reading them,
hastened at once to his great council, where he declared that they expressed
his wishes. Great was the rejoicing in St. Petersburg, and great was the
praise bestowed on Peter; yet, in fact, he had acted only as any drunkard
might act under the compulsion of a stronger will than his.
As before, his brief period of good sense was succeeded by another of the
wildest folly. It was not merely that he reversed the wise policy of his aunt,

but that he reverted to his early fondness for everything that was German.
His bodyguard was made up of German troops—thus exciting the jealousy
of the Russian soldiers. He introduced German fashions. He boasted that his
father had been an officer in the Prussian army. His crazy admiration for
Frederick the Great reached the utmost verge of sycophancy.
As to Catharine, he turned on her with something like ferocity. He
declared in public that his eldest son, the Czarevitch Paul, was really
fathered by Catharine's lovers. At a state banquet he turned to Catharine and
hurled at her a name which no woman could possibly forgive—and least of
all a woman such as Catharine, with her high spirit and imperial pride. He
thrust his mistresses upon her; and at last he ordered her, with her own
hand, to decorate the Countess Vorontzoff, who was known to be his
maitresse en titre.
It was not these gross insults, however, so much as a concern for her
personal safety that led Catharine to take measures for her own defense. She
was accustomed to Peter's ordinary eccentricities. On the ground of his
unfaithfulness to her she now had hardly any right to make complaint. But
she might reasonably fear lest he was becoming mad. If he questioned the
paternity of their eldest son he might take measures to imprison Catharine
or even to destroy her. Therefore she conferred with the Orloffs and other
gentlemen, and their conference rapidly developed into a conspiracy.
The soldiery, as a whole, was loyal to the empress. It hated Peter's
Holstein guards. What she planned was probably the deposition of Peter.
She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace. But
while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early one
morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony.
"We must act at once," said he. "We have been betrayed!"
Catharine was not a woman to waste time. She went immediately to the
barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out the
Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they clashed
their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately afterward
the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son; but as she left the
church she was saluted by the people, as well as by the soldiers, as empress
in her own right.
It was a bold stroke, and it succeeded down to the last detail. The
wretched Peter, who was drilling his German guards at a distance from the

capital, heard of the revolt, found that his sailors at Kronstadt would not
acknowledge him, and then finally submitted. He was taken to Ropsha and
confined within a single room. To him came the Orloffs, quite of their own
accord. Gregory Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive poison into Peter's
mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now quite desperate, hurled
himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized him by the throat with a
tremendous clutch and strangled him till the blood gushed from his ears. In
a few moments the unfortunate man was dead.
Catharine was shocked by the intelligence, but she had no choice save to
accept the result of excessive zeal. She issued a note to the foreign
ambassadors informing them that Peter had died of a violent colic. When
his body was laid out for burial the extravasated blood is said to have oozed
out even through his hands, staining the gloves that had been placed upon
them. No one believed the story of the colic; and some six years later Alexis
Orloff told the truth with the utmost composure. The whole incident was
characteristically Russian.
It is not within the limits of our space to describe the reign of Catharine
the Great—the exploits of her armies, the acuteness of her statecraft, the
vast additions which she made to the Russian Empire, and the impulse
which she gave to science and art and literature. Yet these things ought to be
remembered first of all when one thinks of the woman whom Voltaire once
styled "the Semiramis of the North." Because she was so powerful, because
no one could gainsay her, she led in private a life which has been almost
more exploited than her great imperial achievements. And yet, though she
had lovers whose names have been carefully recorded, even she fulfilled the
law of womanhood—which is to love deeply and intensely only once.
One should not place all her lovers in the same category. As a girl, and
when repelled by the imbecility of Peter, she gave herself to Gregory
Orloff. She admired his strength, his daring, and his unscrupulousness. But
to a woman of her fine intelligence he came to seem almost more brute than
man. She could not turn to him for any of those delicate attentions which a
woman loves so much, nor for that larger sympathy which wins the heart as
well as captivates the senses. A writer of the time has said that Orloff would
hasten with equal readiness from the arms of Catharine to the embraces of
any flat-nosed Finn or filthy Calmuck or to the lowest creature whom he
might encounter in the streets.

It happened that at the time of Catharine's appeal to the imperial guards
there came to her notice another man who—as he proved in a trifling and
yet most significant manner—had those traits which Orloff lacked.
Catharine had mounted, man—fashion, a cavalry horse, and, with a helmet
on her head, had reined up her steed before the barracks. At that moment
One of the minor nobles, who was also favorable to her, observed that her
helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at her side. Bowing low
over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet and fastened it to
hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this slight act gives a
clue to the influence which he afterward exercised over his imperial
mistress!
When Catharine grew weary of the Orloffs, and when she had enriched
them with lands and treasures, she turned to Potemkin; and from then until
the day of his death he was more to her than any other man had ever been.
With others she might flirt and might go even further than flirtation; but she
allowed no other favorite to share her confidence, to give advice, or to
direct her policies.
To other men she made munificent gifts, either because they pleased her
for the moment or because they served her on one occasion or another; but
to Potemkin she opened wide the whole treasury of her vast realm. There
was no limit to what she would do for him. When he first knew her he was a
man of very moderate fortune. Within two years after their intimate
acquaintance had begun she had given him nine million rubles, while
afterward he accepted almost limitless estates in Poland and in every
province of Greater Russia.
He was a man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for mere
wealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the woman
whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg, usually
known as the Taurian Palace, and there he gave the most sumptuous
entertainments, reversing the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
In a superb library there stood one case containing volumes bound with
unusual richness. When the empress, attracted by the bindings, drew forth a
book she found to her surprise that its pages were English bank-notes. The
pages of another proved to be Dutch bank-notes, and, of another, notes on
the Bank of Venice. Of the remaining volumes some were of solid gold,
while others had pages of fine leather in which were set emeralds and rubies

and diamonds and other gems. The story reads like a bit of fiction from the
Arabian Nights. Yet, after all, this was only a small affair compared with
other undertakings with which Potemkin sought to please her.
Thus, after Taurida and the Crimea had been added to the empire by
Potemkin's agency, Catharine set out with him to view her new possessions.
A great fleet of magnificently decorated galleys bore her down the river
Dnieper. The country through which she passed had been a year before an
unoccupied waste. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinary efforts, the empress
found it dotted thick with towns and cities which had been erected for the
occasion, filled with a busy population which swarmed along the riverside
to greet the sovereign with applause. It was only a chain of fantom towns
and cities, made of painted wood and canvas; but while Catharine was there
they were very real, seeming to have solid buildings, magnificent arches,
bustling industries, and beautiful stretches of fertile country. No human
being ever wrought on so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-
management.
Potemkin was, in fact, the one man who could appeal with unfailing
success to so versatile and powerful a spirit as Catharine's. He was
handsome of person, graceful of manner, and with an intellect which
matched her own. He never tried to force her inclination, and, on the other
hand, he never strove to thwart it. To him, as to no other man, she could
turn at any moment and feel that, no matter what her mood, he could
understand her fully. And this, according to Balzac, is the thing that woman
yearns for most—a kindred spirit that can understand without the slightest
need of explanation.
Thus it was that Gregory Potemkin held a place in the soul of this great
woman such as no one else attained. He might be absent, heading armies or
ruling provinces, and on his return he would be greeted with even greater
fondness than before. And it was this rather than his victories over Turk and
other oriental enemies that made Catharine trust him absolutely.
When he died, he died as the supreme master of her foreign policy and at
a time when her word was powerful throughout all Europe. Death came
upon him after he had fought against it with singular tenacity of purpose.
Catharine had given him a magnificent triumph, and he had entertained her
in his Taurian Palace with a splendor such as even Russia had never known
before. Then he fell ill, though with high spirit he would not yield to illness.

He ate rich meats and drank rich wines and bore himself as gallantly as
ever. Yet all at once death came upon him while he was traveling in the
south of Russia. His carriage was stopped, a rug was spread beneath a tree
by the roadside, and there he died, in the country which he had added to the
realms of Russia.
The great empress who loved him mourned him deeply during the five
years of life that still remained to her. The names of other men for whom
she had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one man lived
in her heart in death as he had done in life.
Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, a
creature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and
have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palace
kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one finds the
chief interest of her story to lie in this—that besides being empress and
diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else, at heart a woman.

MARIE ANTOINETTE AND COUNT FERSEN
The English-speaking world long ago accepted a conventional view of
Marie Antoinette. The eloquence of Edmund Burke in one brilliant passage
has fixed, probably for all time, an enduring picture of this unhappy queen.
When we speak or think of her we speak and think first of all of a
dazzling and beautiful woman surrounded by the chivalry of France and
gleaming like a star in the most splendid court of Europe. And then there
comes to us the reverse of the picture. We see her despised, insulted, and
made the butt of brutal men and still more fiendish women; until at last the
hideous tumbrel conveys her to the guillotine, where her head is severed
from her body and her corpse is cast down into a bloody pool.
In these two pictures our emotions are played upon in turn—admiration,
reverence, devotion, and then pity, indignation, and the shudderings of
horror.
Probably in our own country and in England this will remain the historic
Marie Antoinette. Whatever the impartial historian may write, he can never
induce the people at large to understand that this queen was far from
queenly, that the popular idea of her is almost wholly false, and that both in
her domestic life and as the greatest lady in France she did much to bring on
the terrors of that revolution which swept her to the guillotine.
In the first place, it is mere fiction that represents Maria Antoinette as
having been physically beautiful. The painters and engravers have so
idealized her face as in most cases to have produced a purely imaginary
portrait.
She was born in Vienna, in 1755, the daughter of the Emperor Francis
and of that warrior-queen, Maria Theresa. She was a very German-looking
child. Lady Jackson describes her as having a long, thin face, small, pig-like
eyes, a pinched-up mouth, with the heavy Hapsburg lip, and with a
somewhat misshapen form, so that for years she had to be bandaged tightly
to give her a more natural figure.
At fourteen, when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne, she
was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction whatever,

and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her many
blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in French
territory.
We must recall for a moment the conditions which prevailed in France.
King Louis XV. was nearing his end. He was a man of the most shameless
life; yet he had concealed or gilded his infamies by an external dignity and
magnificence which, were very pleasing to his people. The French, liked to
think that their king was the most splendid monarch and the greatest
gentleman in Europe. The courtiers about him might be vile beneath the
surface, yet they were compelled to deport themselves with the form and
the etiquette that had become traditional in France. They might be panders,
or stock-jobbers, or sellers of political offices; yet they must none the less
have wit and grace and outward nobility of manner.
There was also a tradition regarding the French queen. However loose in
character the other women of the court might be, she alone, like Caesar's
wife, must remain above suspicion. She must be purer than the pure. No
breath, of scandal must reach her or be directed against her.
In this way the French court, even under so dissolute a monarch as Louis
XV., maintained its hold upon the loyalty of the people. Crowds came every
morning to view the king in his bed before he arose; the same crowds
watched him as he was dressed by the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and as
he breakfasted and went through all the functions which are usually private.
The King of France must be a great actor. He must appear to his people as
in reality a king-stately, dignified, and beyond all other human beings in his
remarkable presence.
When the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette came to the French court King
Louis XV. kept up in the case the same semblance of austerity. He forbade
these children to have their sleeping-apartments together. He tried to teach
them that if they were to govern as well as to reign they must conform to
the rigid etiquette of Paris and Versailles.
It proved a difficult task, however. The little German princess had no
natural dignity, though she came from a court where the very strictest
imperial discipline prevailed. Marie Antoinette found that she could have
her own way in many things, and she chose to enjoy life without regard to
ceremony. Her escapades at first would have been thought mild enough had
she not been a "daughter of France"; but they served to shock the old

French king, and likewise, perhaps even more, her own imperial mother,
Maria Theresa.
When a report of the young girl's conduct was brought to her the empress
was at first mute with indignation. Then she cried out:
"Can this girl be a child of mine? She surely must be a changeling!"
The Austrian ambassador to France was instructed to warn the
Dauphiness to be more discreet.
"Tell her," said Maria Theresa, "that she will lose her throne, and even
her life, unless she shows more prudence."
But advice and remonstrance were of no avail. Perhaps they might have
been had her husband possessed a stronger character; but the young Louis
was little more fitted to be a king than was his wife to be a queen. Dull of
perception and indifferent to affairs of state, he had only two interests that
absorbed him. One was the love of hunting, and the other was his desire to
shut himself up in a sort of blacksmith shop, where he could hammer away
at the anvil, blow the bellows, and manufacture small trifles of mechanical
inventions. From this smudgy den he would emerge, sooty and greasy, an
object of distaste to his frivolous princess, with her foamy laces and
perfumes and pervasive daintiness.
It was hinted in many quarters, and it has been many times repeated, that
Louis was lacking in virility. Certainly he had no interest in the society of
women and was wholly continent. But this charge of physical incapacity
seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made against some of his
predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon the Great, and also
Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal personage was openly
licentious, he was almost sure to be jeered at by the people as a weakling.
And so poor Louis XVI., as he came to be, was treated with a mixture of
pity and contempt because he loved to hammer and mend locks in his
smithy or shoot game when he might have been caressing ladies who would
have been proud to have him choose them out.
On the other hand, because of this opinion regarding Louis, people were
the more suspicious of Marie Antoinette. Some of them, in coarse language,
criticized her assumed infidelities; others, with a polite sneer, affected to
defend her. But the result of it all was dangerous to both, especially as

France was already verging toward the deluge which Louis XV. had
cynically predicted would follow after him.
In fact, the end came sooner than any one had guessed. Louis XV., who
had become hopelessly and helplessly infatuated with the low-born Jeanne
du Barry, was stricken down with smallpox of the most virulent type. For
many days he lay in his gorgeous bed. Courtiers crowded his sick-room and
the adjacent hall, longing for the moment when the breath would leave his
body. He had lived an evil life, and he was to die a loathsome death; yet he
had borne himself before men as a stately monarch. Though his people had
suffered in a thousand ways from his misgovernment, he was still Louis the
Well Beloved, and they blamed his ministers of state for all the shocking
wrongs that France had felt.
The abler men, and some of the leaders of the people, however, looked
forward to the accession of Louis XVI. He at least was frugal in his habits
and almost plebeian in his tastes, and seemed to be one who would reduce
the enormous taxes that had been levied upon France.
The moment came when the Well Beloved died. His death-room was
fetid with disease, and even the long corridors of the palace reeked with
infection, while the motley mob of men and women, clad in silks and satins
and glittering with jewels, hurried from the spot to pay their homage to the
new Louis, who was spoken of as "the Desired." The body of the late
monarch was hastily thrown into a mass of quick-lime, and was driven
away in a humble wagon, without guards and with no salute, save from a
single veteran, who remembered the glories of Fontenoy and discharged his
musket as the royal corpse was carried through the palace gates.
This was a critical moment in the history of France; but we have to
consider it only as a critical moment in the history of Marie Antoinette. She
was now queen. She had it in her power to restore to the French court its
old-time grandeur, and, so far as the queen was concerned, its purity. Above
all, being a foreigner, she should have kept herself free from reproach and
above every shadow of suspicion.
But here again the indifference of the king undoubtedly played a strange
part in her life. Had he borne himself as her lord and master she might have
respected him. Had he shown her the affection of a husband she might have
loved him. But he was neither imposing, nor, on the other hand, was he
alluring. She wrote very frankly about him in a letter to the Count Orsini:

My tastes are not the same as those of the king, who cares only for
hunting and blacksmith work. You will admit that I should not show to
advantage in a forge. I could not appear there as Vulcan, and the part of
Venus might displease him even more than my tastes.
Thus on the one side is a woman in the first bloom of youth, ardent, eager
—and neglected. On the other side is her husband, whose sluggishness may
be judged by quoting from a diary which he kept during the month in which
he was married. Here is a part of it:
Sunday, 13—Left Versailles. Supper and slept at Compignee, at the house
of M. de Saint-Florentin.
Monday, 14—Interview with Mme. la Dauphine.
Tuesday, 15—Supped at La Muette. Slept at Versailles.
Wednesday, 16—My marriage. Apartment in the gallery. Royal banquet
in the Salle d'Opera.
Thursday, 17—Opera of "Perseus."
Friday, 18—Stag-hunt. Met at La Belle Image. Took one.
Saturday, 19—Dress-ball in the Salle d'Opera. Fireworks.
Thursday, 31—I had an indigestion.
What might have been expected from a young girl placed as this queen
was placed? She was indeed an earlier Eugenie. The first was of royal
blood, the second was almost a plebeian; but each was headstrong,
pleasure-loving, and with no real domestic ties. As Mr. Kipling expresses it
—

The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins;

and so the Austrian woman of 1776 and the Spanish woman of 1856
found amusement in very similar ways. They plunged into a sea of strange
frivolity, such as one finds to-day at the centers of high fashion. Marie
Antoinette bedecked herself with eccentric garments. On her head she wore
a hat styled a "what-is-it," towering many feet in height and flaunting parti-
colored plumes. Worse than all this, she refused to wear corsets, and at
some great functions she would appear in what looked exactly like a
bedroom gown.

She would even neglect the ordinary niceties of life. Her hands were not
well cared for. It was very difficult for the ladies in attendance to persuade
her to brush her teeth with regularity. Again, she would persist in wearing
her frilled and lace-trimmed petticoats long after their dainty edges had
been smirched and blackened.
Yet these things might have been counteracted had she gone no further.
Unfortunately, she did go further. She loved to dress at night like a shop-girl
and venture out into the world of Paris, where she was frequently followed
and recognized. Think of it—the Queen of France, elbowed in dense
crowds and seeking to attract the attention of common soldiers!
Of course, almost every one put the worst construction upon this, and
after a time upon everything she did. When she took a fancy for
constructing labyrinths and secret passages in the palace, all Paris vowed
that she was planning means by which her various lovers might enter
without observation. The hidden printing-presses of Paris swarmed with
gross lampoons about this reckless girl; and, although there was little truth
in what they said, there was enough to cloud her reputation. When she fell
ill with the measles she was attended in her sick-chamber by four
gentlemen of the court. The king was forbidden to enter lest he might catch
the childish disorder.
The apathy of the king, indeed, drove her into many a folly. After four
years of marriage, as Mrs. Mayne records, he had only reached the point of
giving her a chilly kiss. The fact that she had no children became a serious
matter. Her brother, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, when he visited Paris,
ventured to speak to the king upon the subject. Even the Austrian
ambassador had thrown out hints that the house of Bourbon needed direct
heirs. Louis grunted and said little, but he must have known how good was
the advice.
It was at about this time when there came to the French court a young
Swede named Axel de Fersen, who bore the title of count, but who was
received less for his rank than for his winning manner, his knightly bearing,
and his handsome, sympathetic face. Romantic in spirit, he threw himself at
once into a silent inner worship of Marie Antoinette, who had for him a
singular attraction. Wherever he could meet her they met. To her growing
cynicism this breath of pure yet ardent affection was very grateful. It came
as something fresh and sweet into the feverish life she led.

Other men had had the audacity to woo her—among them Duc de
Lauzun, whose complicity in the famous affair of the diamond necklace
afterward cast her, though innocent, into ruin; the Duc de Biron; and the
Baron de Besenval, who had obtained much influence over her, which he
used for the most evil purposes. Besenval tainted her mind by persuading
her to read indecent books, in the hope that at last she would become his
prey.
But none of these men ever meant to Marie Antoinette what Fersen
meant. Though less than twenty years of age, he maintained the reserve of a
great gentleman, and never forced himself upon her notice. Yet their first
acquaintance had occurred in such a way as to give to it a touch of intimacy.
He had gone to a masked ball, and there had chosen for his partner a lady
whose face was quite concealed. Something drew the two together. The
gaiety of the woman and the chivalry of the man blended most
harmoniously. It was only afterward that he discovered that his chance
partner was the first lady in France. She kept his memory in her mind; for
some time later, when he was at a royal drawing-room and she heard his
voice, she exclaimed:
"Ah, an old acquaintance!"
From this time Fersen was among those who were most intimately
favored by the queen. He had the privilege of attending her private
receptions at the palace of the Trianon, and was a conspicuous figure at the
feasts given in the queen's honor by the Princess de Lamballe, a beautiful
girl whose head was destined afterward to be severed from her body and
borne upon a bloody pike through the streets of Paris. But as yet the deluge
had not arrived and the great and noble still danced upon the brink of a
volcano.
Fersen grew more and more infatuated, nor could he quite conceal his
feelings. The queen, in her turn, was neither frightened nor indignant. His
passion, so profound and yet so respectful, deeply moved her. Then came a
time when the truth was made clear to both of them. Fersen was near her
while she was singing to the harpsichord, and "she was betrayed by her own
music into an avowal which song made easy." She forgot that she was
Queen of France. She only felt that her womanhood had been starved and
slighted, and that here was a noble-minded lover of whom she could be
proud.

Some time after this announcement was officially made of the
approaching accouchement of the queen. It was impossible that malicious
tongues should be silent. The king's brother, the Comte de Provence, who
hated the queen, just as the Bonapartes afterward hated Josephine, did his
best to besmirch her reputation. He had, indeed, the extraordinary insolence
to do so at a time when one would suppose that the vilest of men would
remain silent. The child proved to be a princess, and she afterward received
the title of Duchesse d'Angouleme. The King of Spain asked to be her
godfather at the christening, which was to be held in the cathedral of Notre
Dame. The Spanish king was not present in person, but asked the Comte de
Provence to act as his proxy.
On the appointed day the royal party proceeded to the cathedral, and the
Comte de Provence presented the little child at the baptismal font. The
grand almoner, who presided, asked;
"What name shall be given to this child?"
The Comte de Provence answered in a sneering tone:
"Oh, we don't begin with that. The first thing to find out is who the father
and the mother are!"
These words, spoken at such a place and such a time, and with a strongly
sardonic ring, set all Paris gossiping. It was a thinly veiled innuendo that the
father of the child was not the King of France. Those about the court
immediately began to look at Fersen with significant smiles. The queen
would gladly have kept him near her; but Fersen cared even more for her
good name than for his love of her. It would have been so easy to remain in
the full enjoyment of his conquest; but he was too chivalrous for that, or,
rather, he knew that the various ambassadors in Paris had told their
respective governments of the rising scandal. In fact, the following secret
despatch was sent to the King of Sweden by his envoy:
I must confide to your majesty that the young Count Fersen has been so
well received by the queen that various persons have taken it amiss. I own
that I am sure that she has a liking for him. I have seen proofs of it too
certain to be doubted. During the last few days the queen has not taken her
eyes off him, and as she gazed they were full of tears. I beg your majesty to
keep their secret to yourself.
The queen wept because Fersen had resolved to leave her lest she should
be exposed to further gossip. If he left her without any apparent reason, the

gossip would only be the more intense. Therefore he decided to join the
French troops who were going to America to fight under Lafayette. A
brilliant but dissolute duchess taunted him when the news became known.
"How is this?" said she. "Do you forsake your conquest?"
But, "lying like a gentleman," Fersen answered, quietly:
"Had I made a conquest I should not forsake it. I go away free, and,
unfortunately, without leaving any regret."
Nothing could have been more chivalrous than the pains which Fersen
took to shield the reputation of the queen. He even allowed it to be
supposed that he was planning a marriage with a rich young Swedish
woman who had been naturalized in England. As a matter of fact, he
departed for America, and not very long afterward the young woman in
question married an Englishman.
Fersen served in America for a time, returning, however, at the end of
three years. He was one of the original Cincinnati, being admitted to the
order by Washington himself. When he returned to France he was received
with high honors and was made colonel of the royal Swedish regiment.
The dangers threatening Louis and his court, which were now gigantic
and appalling, forbade him to forsake the queen. By her side he did what he
could to check the revolution; and, failing this, he helped her to maintain an
imperial dignity of manner which she might otherwise have lacked. He
faced the bellowing mob which surrounded the Tuileries. Lafayette tried to
make the National Guard obey his orders, but he was jeered at for his pains.
Violent epithets were hurled at the king. The least insulting name which
they could give him was "a fat pig." As for the queen, the most filthy
phrases were showered upon her by the men, and even more so by the
women, who swarmed out of the slums and sought her life.
At last, in 1791, it was decided that the king and the queen and their
children, of whom they now had three, should endeavor to escape from
Paris. Fersen planned their flight, but it proved to be a failure. Every one
remembers how they were discovered and halted at Varennes. The royal
party was escorted back to Paris by the mob, which chanted with insolent
additions:
"We've brought back the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!
Now we shall have bread!"

Against the savage fury which soon animated the French a foreigner like
Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored, night and day,
to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have been described by
Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and queen were practically
made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They went through horrors that were
stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at the head of his so-called Madmen
(Enrages). The king was executed in January, 1792. The queen dragged out
a brief existence in a prison where she was for ever under the eyes of
human brutes, who guarded her and watched her and jeered at her at times
when even men would be sensitive. Then, at last, she mounted the scaffold,
and her head, with its shining hair, fell into the bloody basket.
Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a young
girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her actions. As a
queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity which recalled the dignity
of her imperial mother. At first a flirt, she fell deeply in love when she met a
man who was worthy of that love. She lived for most part like a mere
cocotte. She died every inch a queen.
One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie Antoinette
and that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for nearly twenty years. She
died amid the shrieks and execrations of a maddened populace in Paris; he
was practically torn in pieces by a mob in the streets of Stockholm. The day
of his death was the anniversary of the flight to Varennes. To the last
moment of his existence he remained faithful to the memory of the royal
woman who had given herself so utterly to him.

THE STORY OF AARON BURR
There will come a time when the name of Aaron Burr will be cleared
from the prejudice which now surrounds it, when he will stand in the public
estimation side by side with Alexander Hamilton, whom he shot in a duel in
1804, but whom in many respects he curiously resembled. When the white
light of history shall have searched them both they will appear as two
remarkable men, each having his own undoubted faults and at the same
time his equally undoubted virtues.
Burr and Hamilton were born within a year of each other—Burr being a
grandson of Jonathan Edwards, and Alexander Hamilton being the
illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Each of them was
short in stature, keen of intellect, of great physical endurance, courage, and
impressive personality. Each as a young man served on the staff of
Washington during the Revolutionary War, and each of them quarreled with
him, though in a different way.
On one occasion Burr was quite unjustly suspected by Washington of
looking over the latter's shoulder while he was writing. "Washington leaped
to his feet with the exclamation:
"How dare you, Colonel Burr?"
Burr's eyes flashed fire at the question, and he retorted, haughtily:
"Colonel Burr DARE do anything."
This, however, was the end of their altercation The cause of Hamilton's
difference with his chief is not known, but it was a much more serious
quarrel; so that the young officer left his staff position in a fury and took no
part in the war until the end, when he was present at the battle of Yorktown.
Burr, on the other hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of
Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was
shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed
himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but Burr
carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower of musket-
balls and grape-shot.

Hamilton had no belief in the American Constitution, which he called "a
shattered, feeble thing." He could never obtain an elective office, and he
would have preferred to see the United States transformed into a kingdom.
Washington's magnanimity and clear-sightedness made Hamilton Secretary
of the Treasury. Burr, on the other hand, continued his military service until
the war was ended, routing the enemy at Hackensack, enduring the horrors
of Valley Forge, commanding a brigade at the battle of Monmouth, and
heading the defense of the city of New Haven. He was also attorney-general
of New York, was elected to the United States Senate, was tied with
Jefferson for the Presidency, and then became Vice-President.
Both Hamilton and Burr were effective speakers; but, while Hamilton
was wordy and diffuse, Burr spoke always to the point, with clear and
cogent reasoning. Both were lavish spenders of money, and both were
engaged in duels before the fatal one in which Hamilton fell. Both believed
in dueling as the only way of settling an affair of honor. Neither of them
was averse to love affairs, though it may be said that Hamilton sought
women, while Burr was rather sought by women. When Secretary of the
Treasury, Hamilton was obliged to confess an adulterous amour in order to
save himself from the charge of corrupt practices in public office. So long
as Burr's wife lived he was a devoted, faithful husband to her. Hamilton was
obliged to confess his illicit acts while his wife, formerly Miss Elizabeth
Schuyler, was living. She spent her later years in buying and destroying the
compromising documents which her husband had published for his
countrymen to read.
The most extraordinary thing about Aaron Burr was the magnetic quality
that was felt by every one who approached him. The roots of this penetrated
down into a deep vitality. He was always young, always alert, polished in
manner, courageous with that sort of courage which does not even
recognize the presence of danger, charming in conversation, and able to
adapt it to men or women of any age whatever. His hair was still dark in his
eightieth year. His step was still elastic, his motions were still as
spontaneous and energetic, as those of a youth.
So it was that every one who knew him experienced his fascination. The
rough troops whom he led through the Canadian swamps felt the iron hand
of his discipline; yet they were devoted to him, since he shared all their

toils, faced all their dangers, and ate with them the scraps of hide which
they gnawed to keep the breath of life in their shrunken bodies.
Burr's discipline was indeed very strict, so that at first raw recruits
rebelled against it. On one occasion the men of an untrained company
resented it so bitterly that they decided to shoot Colonel Burr as he paraded
them for roll-call that evening. Burr somehow got word of it and contrived
to have all the cartridges drawn from their muskets. When the time for the
roll-call came one of the malcontents leaped from the front line and leveled
his weapon at Burr.
"Now is the time, boys!" he shouted.
Like lightning Burr's sword flashed from its scabbard with such a
vigorous stroke as to cut the man's arm completely off and partly to cleave
the musket.
"Take your place in the ranks," said Burr.
The mutineer obeyed, dripping with blood. A month later every man in
that company was devoted to his commander. They had learned that
discipline was the surest source of safety.
But with this high spirit and readiness to fight Burr had a most pleasing
way of meeting every one who came to him. When he was arrested in the
Western forests, charged with high treason, the sound of his voice won from
jury after jury verdicts of acquittal. Often the sheriffs would not arrest him.
One grand jury not merely exonerated him from all public misdemeanors,
but brought in a strong presentment against the officers of the government
for molesting him.
It was the same everywhere. Burr made friends and devoted allies among
all sorts of men. During his stay in France, England, Germany, and Sweden
he interested such men as Charles Lamb, Jeremy Bentham, Sir Walter Scott,
Goethe, and Heeren. They found his mind able to meet with theirs on equal
terms. Burr, indeed, had graduated as a youth with honors from Princeton,
and had continued his studies there after graduation, which was then a most
unusual thing to do. But, of course, he learned most from his contact with
men and women of the world.
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in The Minister's Wooing, has given what is
probably an exact likeness of Aaron Burr, with his brilliant gifts and some
of his defects. It is strong testimony to the character of Burr that Mrs. Stowe

set out to paint him as a villain; but before she had written long she felt his
fascination and made her readers, in their own despite, admirers of this
remarkable man. There are many parallels, indeed, between him and
Napoleon—in the quickness of his intellect, the ready use of his resources,
and his power over men, while he was more than Napoleon in his delightful
gift of conversation and the easy play of his cultured mind.
Those who are full of charm are willing also to be charmed. All his life
Burr was abstemious in food and drink. His tastes were most refined. It is
difficult to believe that such a man could have been an unmitigated
profligate.
In his twentieth year there seems to have begun the first of the romances
that run through the story of his long career. Perhaps one ought not to call it
the first romance, for at eighteen, while he was studying law at Litchfield, a
girl, whose name has been suppressed, made an open avowal of love for
him. Almost at the same time an heiress with a large fortune would have
married him had he been willing to accept her hand. But at this period he
was only a boy and did not take such things seriously.
Two years later, after Burr had seen hard service at Quebec and on
Manhattan Island, his name was associated with that of a very beautiful girl
named Margaret Moncrieffe. She was the daughter of a British major, but in
some way she had been captured while within the American lines. Her
captivity was regarded as little more than a joke; but while she was thus a
prisoner she saw a great deal of Burr. For several months they were
comrades, after which General Putnam sent her with his compliments to her
father.
Margaret Moncrieffe had a most emotional nature. There can be no doubt
that she deeply loved the handsome young American officer, whom she
never saw again. It is doubtful how far their intimacy was carried. Later she
married a Mr. Coghlan. After reaching middle life she wrote of Burr in a
way which shows that neither years nor the obligations of marriage could
make her forget that young soldier, whom she speaks of as "the conqueror
of her soul." In the rather florid style of those days the once youthful
Margaret Moncrieffe expresses herself as follows:
Oh, may these pages one day meet the eye of him who subdued my
virgin heart, whom the immutable, unerring laws of nature had pointed out

for my husband, but whose sacred decree the barbarous customs of society
fatally violated!
Commenting on this paragraph, Mr. H. C. Merwin justly remarks that,
whatever may have been Burr's conduct toward Margaret Moncrieffe, the
lady herself, who was the person chiefly concerned, had no complaint to
make of it. It certainly was no very serious affair, since in the following
year Burr met a lady who, while she lived, was the only woman for whom
he ever really cared.
This was Theodosia Prevost, the wife of a major in the British army. Burr
met her first in 1777, while she was living with her sister in Westchester
County. Burr's command was fifteen miles across the river, but distance and
danger made no difference to him. He used to mount a swift horse, inspect
his sentinels and outposts, and then gallop to the Hudson, where a barge
rowed by six soldiers awaited him. The barge was well supplied with
buffalo-skins, upon which the horse was thrown with his legs bound, and
then half an hour's rowing brought them to the other side. There Burr
resumed his horse, galloped to the house of Mrs. Prevost, and, after
spending a few hours with her, returned in the same way.
Mrs. Prevost was by no means beautiful, but she had an attractiveness of
her own. She was well educated and possessed charming manners, with a
disposition both gentle and affectionate. Her husband died soon after the
beginning of the war, and then Burr married her. No more ideal family life
could be conceived than his, and the letters which passed between the two
are full of adoration. Thus she wrote to him:
Tell me, why do I grow every day more tenacious of your regard? Is it
because each revolving day proves you more deserving?
And thus Burr answered her:
Continue to multiply your letters to me. They are all my solace. The last
six are constantly within my reach. I read them once a day at least. Write
me all that I have asked, and a hundred things which I have not.
When it is remembered that these letters were written after nine years of
marriage it is hard to believe all the evil things that have been said of Burr.
His wife died in 1794, and he then gave a double affection to his
daughter Theodosia, whose beauty and accomplishments were known
throughout the country. Burr took the greatest pains in her education, and

believed that she should be trained, as he had been, to be brave, industrious,
and patient. He himself, who has been described as a voluptuary, delighted
in the endurance of cold and heat and of severe labor.
After his death one of his younger admirers was asked what Burr had
done for him. The reply was characteristic.
"He made me iron," was the answer.
No father ever gave more attention to his daughter's welfare. As to
Theodosia's studies he was very strict, making her read Greek and Latin
every day, with drawing and music and history, in addition to French. Not
long before her marriage to Joseph Allston, of South Carolina, Burr wrote
to her:
I really think, my dear Theo, that you will be very soon beyond all verbal
criticism, and that my whole attention will be presently directed to the
improvement of your style.
Theodosia Burr married into a family of good old English stock, where
riches were abundant, and high character was regarded as the best of all
possessions. Every one has heard of the mysterious tragedy which is
associated with her history. In 1812, when her husband had been elected
Governor of his state, her only child—a sturdy boy of eleven—died, and
Theodosia's health was shattered by her sorrow. In the same year Burr
returned from a sojourn in Europe, and his loving daughter embarked from
Charleston on a schooner, the Patriot, to meet her father in New York. When
Burr arrived he was met by a letter which told him that his grandson was
dead and that Theodosia was coming to him.
Weeks sped by, and no news was heard of the ill-fated Patriot. At last it
became evident that she must have gone down or in some other way have
been lost. Burr and Governor Allston wrote to each other letter after letter,
of which each one seems to surpass the agony of the other. At last all hope
was given up. Governor Allston died soon after of a broken heart; but Burr,
as became a Stoic, acted otherwise.
He concealed everything that reminded him of Theodosia. He never
spoke of his lost daughter. His grief was too deep-seated and too terrible for
speech. Only once did he ever allude to her, and this was in a letter written
to an afflicted friend, which contained the words:

Ever since the event which separated me from mankind I have been able
neither to give nor to receive consolation.
In time the crew of a pirate vessel was captured and sentenced to be
hanged. One of the men, who seemed to be less brutal than the rest, told
how, in 1812, they had captured a schooner, and, after their usual practice,
had compelled the passengers to walk the plank. All hesitated and showed
cowardice, except only one—a beautiful woman whose eyes were as bright
and whose bearing was as unconcerned as if she were safe on shore. She
quickly led the way, and, mounting the plank with a certain scorn of death,
said to the others:
"Come, I will show you how to die."
It has always been supposed that this intrepid girl may have been
Theodosia Allston. If so, she only acted as her father would have done and
in strict accordance with his teachings.
This resolute courage, this stern joy in danger, this perfect equanimity,
made Burr especially attractive to women, who love courage, the more so
when it is coupled with gentleness and generosity.
Perhaps no man in our country has been so vehemently accused
regarding his relations with the other sex. The most improbable stories were
told about him, even by his friends. As to his enemies, they took boundless
pains to paint him in the blackest colors. According to them, no woman was
safe from his intrigues. He was a perfect devil in leading them astray and
then casting them aside.
Thus one Matthew L. Davis, in whom Burr had confided as a friend,
wrote of him long afterward a most unjust account—unjust because we
have proofs that it was false in the intensity of its abuse. Davis wrote:
It is truly surprising how any individual could become so eminent as a
soldier, as a statesman, and as a professional man who devoted so much
time to the other sex as was devoted by Colonel Burr. For more than half a
century of his life they seemed to absorb his whole thought. His intrigues
were without number; the sacred bonds of friendship were unhesitatingly
violated when they operated as barriers to the indulgence of his passions. In
this particular Burr appears to have been unfeeling and heartless.
It is impossible to believe that the Spartan Burr, whose life was one of
incessant labor and whose kindliness toward every one was so well known,

should have deserved a commentary like this. The charge of immorality is
so easily made and so difficult of disproof that it has been flung
promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in our own country,
Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when Gladstone was
more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a question of a
woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London clubs were
humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that this aged and
austere old gentleman was not above seeking common street amours.
And so with Aaron Burr to a great extent. That he was a man of strict
morality it would be absurd to maintain. That he was a reckless and
licentious profligate would be almost equally untrue. Mr. H. O. Merwin has
very truly said:
Part of Burr's reputation for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that vanity
respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused to
accept the parentage of a child.
"Why do you allow this woman to saddle you with her child when you
KNOW you are not the father of it?" said a friend to him a few months
before his death.
"Sir," he replied, "when a lady does me the honor to name me the father
of her child I trust I shall always be too gallant to show myself ungrateful
for the favor."
There are two curious legends relating to Aaron Burr. They serve to show
that his reputation became such that he could not enjoy the society of a
woman without having her regarded as his mistress.
When he was United States Senator from New York he lived in
Philadelphia at the lodging-house of a Mrs. Payne, whose daughter,
Dorothy Todd, was the very youthful widow of an officer. This young
woman was rather free in her manners, and Burr was very responsive in his.
At the time, however, nothing was thought of it; but presently Burr brought
to the house the serious and somewhat pedantic James Madison and
introduced him to the hoyden.
Madison was then forty-seven years of age, a stranger to society, but
gradually rising to a prominent position in politics—"the great little
Madison," as Burr rather lightly called him. Before very long he had
proposed marriage to the young widow. She hesitated, and some one
referred the matter to President Washington. The Father of his Country

answered in what was perhaps the only opinion that he ever gave on the
subject of matrimony. It is worth preserving because it shows that he had a
sense of humor:
For my own part, I never did nor do I believe I ever shall give advice to a
woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage... A woman very rarely
asks an opinion or seeks advice on such an occasion till her mind is wholly
made up, and then it is with the hope and expectation of obtaining a
sanction, and not that she means to be governed by your disapproval.
Afterward when Dolly Madison with, her yellow turban and kittenish
ways was making a sensation in Washington society some one recalled her
old association with Burr. At once the story sprang to light that Burr had
been her lover and that he had brought about the match with Madison as an
easy way of getting rid of her.
There is another curious story which makes Martin Van Buren, eighth
President of the United States, to have been the illegitimate son of Aaron
Burr. There is no earthly reason for believing this, except that Burr
sometimes stopped overnight at the tavern in Kinderhook which was kept
by Van Buren's putative father, and that Van Buren in later life showed an
astuteness equal to that of Aaron Burr himself, so that he was called by his
opponents "the fox of Kinderhook." But, as Van Buren was born in
December of the same year (1782) in which Burr was married to Theodosia
Prevost, the story is utterly improbable when we remember, as we must, the
ardent affection which Burr showed his wife, not only before their
marriage, but afterward until her death.
Putting aside these purely spurious instances, as well as others cited by
Mr. Parton, the fact remains that Aaron Burr, like Daniel Webster, found a
great attraction in the society of women; that he could please them and
fascinate them to an extraordinary degree; and that during his later life he
must be held quite culpable in this respect. His love-making was ardent and
rapid, as we shall afterward see in the case of his second marriage.
Many other stories are told of him. For instance, it is said that he once
took a stage-coach from Jersey City to Philadelphia. The only other
occupant was a woman of high standing and one whose family deeply hated
Aaron Burr. Nevertheless, so the story goes, before they had reached
Newark she was absolutely swayed by his charm of manner; and when the

coach made its last stop before Philadelphia she voluntarily became his
mistress.
It must also be said that, unlike those of Webster and Hamilton, his
intrigues were never carried on with women of the lower sort. This may be
held by some to deepen the charge against him; but more truly does it
exonerate him, since it really means that in many cases these women of the
world threw themselves at him and sought him as a lover, when otherwise
he might never have thought of them.
That he was not heartless and indifferent to those who had loved him
may be shown by the great care which he took to protect their names and
reputations. Thus, on the day before his duel with Hamilton, he made a will
in which he constituted his son-in-law as his executor. At the same time he
wrote a sealed letter to Governor Allston in which he said:
If you can pardon and indulge a folly, I would suggest that Mme. ——,
too well known under the name of Leonora, has claims on my recollection.
She is now with her husband at Santiago, in Cuba.
Another fact has been turned to his discredit. From many women, in the
course of his long life, he had received a great quantity of letters written by
aristocratic hands on scented paper, and these letters he had never burned.
Here again, perhaps, was shown the vanity of the man who loved love for
its own sake. He kept all these papers in a huge iron-clamped chest, and he
instructed Theodosia in case he should die to burn every letter which might
injure any one.
After Theodosia's death Burr gave the same instructions to Matthew L.
Davis, who did, indeed, burn them, though he made their existence a means
of blackening the character of Burr. He should have destroyed them
unopened, and should never have mentioned them in his memoirs of the
man who trusted him as a friend.
Such was Aaron Burr throughout a life which lasted for eighty years. His
last romance, at the age of seventy-eight, is worth narrating because it has
often been misunderstood.
Mme. Jumel was a Rhode Island girl who at seventeen years of age
eloped with an English officer, Colonel Peter Croix. Her first husband died
while she was still quite young, and she then married a French wine-
merchant, Stephen Jumel, some twenty years her senior, but a man of much
vigor and intelligence. M. Jumel made a considerable fortune in New York,

owning a small merchant fleet; and after Napoleon's downfall he and his
wife went to Paris, where she made a great impression in the salons by her
vivacity and wit and by her lavish expenditures.
Losing, however, part of what she and her husband possessed, Mme.
Jumel returned to New York, bringing with her a great amount of furniture
and paintings, with which she decorated the historic house still standing in
the upper part of Manhattan Island—a mansion held by her in her own
right. She managed her estate with much ability; and in 1828 M. Jumel
returned to live with her in what was in those days a splendid villa.
Four years later, however, M. Jumel suffered an accident from which he
died in a few days, leaving his wife still an attractive woman and not very
much past her prime. Soon after she had occasion to seek for legal advice,
and for this purpose visited the law-office of Aaron Burr. She had known
him a good many years before; and, though he was now seventy-eight years
of age, there was no perceptible change in him. He was still courtly in
manner, tactful, and deferential, while physically he was straight, active,
and vigorous.
A little later she invited him to a formal banquet, where he displayed all
his charms and shone to great advantage. When he was about to lead her in
to dinner, he said:
"I give my hand, madam; my heart has long been yours."
These attentions he followed up with several other visits, and finally
proposed that she should marry him. Much fluttered and no less flattered,
she uttered a sort of "No" which was not likely to discourage a man like
Aaron Burr.
"I shall come to you before very long," he said, "accompanied by a
clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it."
This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather
liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the leaves
were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's mansion
accompanied by Dr. Bogart—the very clergyman who had married him to
his first wife fifty years before.
Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a
strong one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The great
house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's advice.

Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination. Therefore she
arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris gowns; the members of
her household and eight servants were called in and the ceremony was duly
performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed. A dozen cobwebbed bottles
of wine were brought up from the cellar, and the marriage feast went on
merrily until after midnight.
This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was
strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections of a
woman so much younger than he—a woman of wealth and knowledge of
the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another woman
—a mere girl—who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was told of
his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early part of that same
year he had been accused of being the father of a new-born child, and in
spite of his age every one believed the charge to be true. Here is a case that
it would be hard to parallel.
The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very long.
They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state Burr's
nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge over the
Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they brought her
little income. He suggested that she should transfer the investment, which,
after all, was not a very large one, and place it in a venture in Texas which
looked promising. The speculation turned out to be a loss, however, and this
made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the more so as she had reason to think
that her ever-youthful husband had been engaged in flirting with the
country girls near the Jumel mansion.
She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One
day the post-master at what was then the village of Harlem was surprised to
see Mrs. Burr drive up before the post-office in an open carriage. He came
out to ask what she desired, and was surprised to find her in a violent
temper and with an enormous horse-pistol on each cushion at her side.
"What do you wish, madam?" said he, rather mildly.
"What do I wish?" she cried. "Let me get at that villain Aaron Burr!"
Presently Burr seems to have succeeded in pacifying her; but in the end
they separated, though she afterward always spoke most kindly of him.
When he died, only about a year later, she is said to have burst into a flood

of tears—another tribute to the fascination which Aaron Burr exercised
through all his checkered life.
It is difficult to come to any fixed opinion regarding the moral character
of Aaron Burr. As a soldier he was brave to the point of recklessness. As a
political leader he was almost the equal of Jefferson and quite superior to
Hamilton. As a man of the world he was highly accomplished, polished in
manner, charming in conversation. He made friends easily, and he forgave
his enemies with a broadmindedness that is unusual.
On the other hand, in his political career there was a touch of insincerity,
and it can scarcely be denied that he used his charm too often to the injury
of those women who could not resist his insinuating ways and the caressing
notes of his rich voice. But as a husband, in his youth, he was devoted,
affectionate, and loyal; while as a father he was little less than worshiped by
the daughter whom he reared so carefully.
One of his biographers very truly says that no such wretch as Burr has
been declared to be could have won and held the love of such a wife and
such a daughter as Burr had.
When all the other witnesses have been heard, let the two Theodosias be
summoned, and especially that daughter who showed toward him an
affectionate veneration unsurpassed by any recorded in history or romance.
Such an advocate as Theodosia the younger must avail in some degree,
even though the culprit were brought before the bar of Heaven itself.

GEORGE IV. AND MRS. FITZHERBERT
In the last decade of the eighteenth century England was perhaps the
most brilliant nation of the world. Other countries had been humbled by the
splendid armies of France and were destined to be still further humbled by
the emperor who came from Corsica. France had begun to seize the scepter
of power; yet to this picture there was another side—fearful want and
grievous poverty and the horrors of the Revolution. Russia was too far
away, and was still considered too barbarous, for a brilliant court to flourish
there. Prussia had the prestige that Frederick the Great won for her, but she
was still a comparatively small state. Italy was in a condition of political
chaos; the banks of the Rhine were running blood where the Austrian
armies faced the gallant Frenchmen under the leadership of Moreau. But
England, in spite of the loss of her American colonies, was rich and
prosperous, and her invincible fleets were extending her empire over the
seven seas.
At no time in modern England has the court at London seen so much real
splendor or such fine manners. The royalist emigres who fled from France
brought with them names and pedigrees that were older than the Crusades,
and many of them were received with the frankest, freest English
hospitality. If here and there some marquis or baron of ancient blood was
perforce content to teach music to the daughters of tradesmen in suburban
schools, nevertheless they were better off than they had been in France,
harried by the savage gaze-hounds of the guillotine. Afterward, in the days
of the Restoration, when they came back to their estates, they had probably
learned more than one lesson from the bouledogues of Merry England, who
had little tact, perhaps, but who were at any rate kindly and willing to share
their goods with pinched and poverty-stricken foreigners.
The court, then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from
Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of
England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition of
the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull
creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which finally
swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture of him is absurdly

untrue to the actual facts. George III. was by no means a dullard, nor was he
a sort of beefy country squire who roved about the palace gardens with his
unattractive spouse.
Obstinate enough he was, and ready for a combat with the rulers of the
Continent or with his self-willed sons; but he was a man of brains and
power, and Lord Rosebery has rightly described him as the most striking
constitutional figure of his time. Had he retained his reason, and had his
erratic and self-seeking son not succeeded him during his own lifetime,
Great Britain might very possibly have entered upon other ways than those
which opened to her after the downfall of Napoleon.
The real center of fashionable England, however, was not George III., but
rather his son, subsequently George IV., who was made Prince of Wales
three days after his birth, and who became prince regent during the insanity
of the king. He was the leader of the social world, the fit companion of
Beau Brummel and of a choice circle of rakes and fox-hunters who drank
pottle-deep. Some called him "the first gentleman of Europe." Others, who
knew him better, described him as one who never kept his word to man or
woman and who lacked the most elementary virtues.
Yet it was his good luck during the first years of his regency to be
popular as few English kings have ever been. To his people he typified old
England against revolutionary France; and his youth and gaiety made many
like him. He drank and gambled; he kept packs of hounds and strings of
horses; he ran deeply into debt that he might patronize the sports of that
uproarious day. He was a gallant "Corinthian," a haunter of dens where
there were prize-fights and cock-fights, and there was hardly a doubtful
resort in London where his face was not familiar.
He was much given to gallantry—not so much, as it seemed, for
wantonness, but from sheer love of mirth and chivalry. For a time, with his
chosen friends, such as Fox and Sheridan, he ventured into reckless
intrigues that recalled the amours of his predecessor, Charles II. He had by
no means the wit and courage of Charles; and, indeed, the house of Hanover
lacked the outward show of chivalry which made the Stuarts shine with
external splendor. But he was good-looking and stalwart, and when he had
half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume a very manly
appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in his prime. He made
that period famous for its card-playing, its deep drinking, and for the

dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no less than for the
gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories on sea and land. It
came, however, to be seen that his true achievements were in reality only
escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his so-called "sensibility" was
but sham. He invented buckles, striped waistcoats, and flamboyant collars,
but he knew nothing of the principles of kingship or the laws by which a
state is governed.
The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first to
the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before these
episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.
One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel," to
a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden name
was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits by
Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and
temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted upon
clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage trappings of
the popular novels—cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed watchers to
warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this nonsense so
seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the stage, and forsook
her husband, believing that the prince would never weary of her.
He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such a
type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he cut
her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money, he may
have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she succeeded
in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow it and that this
obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament paid for him.
It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so far
as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it illegal for any
member of the English royal family to marry without the permission of the
king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent might be lawful in
the eyes of the church, but the children born of it could not inherit any
claim to the throne.
It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly
enforced. Thus William IV., who succeeded George IV., was married, before

his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland). Afterward he
lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as Queen
Adelaide.
There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to be
born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced to give up
a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage arranged for
him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Kent was
the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the regular line. The
only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood. The Duke of
Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of Clarence, later
King William IV., was almost too old; and therefore, to insure the
succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and attractive
woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready for the
honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep and sincere
feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:
"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times, too
—why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And
what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the
Stuarts—they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you have
had!"
In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had been
so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a wistful
thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace, which was
assigned as his residence.
Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of fine
breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as head of the
family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen Victoria
stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites of the
church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never quite
forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the duke's wife—
she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge—was received almost
everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British army and
navy, respectively.

The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of his
marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king. This
was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was six
years older than the young prince when she first met him in company with a
body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.
Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had already
been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the advantage
over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic, and so by
another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be illegal. Yet just
because of all these different objections the prince was doubly drawn to her,
and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if he could but win her.
His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:
"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the succession
to the throne."
"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my
brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman."
Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to a
morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George too
well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another faith than
his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was always given to
private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste to her house to tell
her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged to see her, and that unless
she came he would repeat the act. The lady yielded, and hurried to Carlton
House, the prince's residence; but she was prudent enough to take with her
the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a reigning beauty of the court.
The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive.—The
prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles blood-
stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer, vowing
that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself again. In the
presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess, were witnesses, he
formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady Devonshire's wedding-ring
sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged it in a document.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after this
scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So she

sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to the Continent,
where he could not reach her, although his detectives followed her steps for
a year.
At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince in
such fashion as she could—a marriage of love, and surely one of morality,
though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed "in her own
drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the officiating
Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives."
Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied, and
Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded as a
person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion the
prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in order that his
debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by the Treasury.
George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search of
some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village" of
Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found it
an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because of its view
of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert had previously lived there.
However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the spot
where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to be an
extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that was
agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at Brighton.
At once the place sprang into popularity.
At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure, partly
Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade of the
Steyne.
During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly called

"London by the Sea." There were the Duc de Chartres, of France; statesmen
and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a very beautiful
woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera, to whom the
prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds; and a sister of
the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her brother. She often took
the president's chair at a club which George's friends had organized and
which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.
Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was most
noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently entered,
though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was a decorous
one.
No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince." The old king and his wife,
however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly due to
the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had received a
number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at the time of the
Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the prince's racing and
dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million pounds, so that
Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were set against him.
Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had no
children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified positively
that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George. Nevertheless,
more than one American claimant has risen to advance some utterly
visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged descent from
Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at
Brighton. In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the
Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that she
disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut off the view of
the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen objected to the
associations of the place, and did not care to be reminded of the time when
her uncle had lived there so long in a morganatic state of marriage.

At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage, and a
wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of the Duke of
Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after his wedding
with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert. With the latter he
had known many days and hours of happiness. With Princess Caroline he
had no happiness at all.
Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he took her
hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered to one of his
friends:
"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy!"
Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she did not
understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.
We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one of
open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen, while
the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her attendants
and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry, sordid contrast
between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort of cavalier and
this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious German wife.
Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the
moonlight on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better
still, when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle
woman who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was
thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of
Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the mob
and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only a month
after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to Brunswick
for burial.
George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care every
letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last illness she had

sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George "read eagerly."
Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters; but he would do so
only in return for those which he had written to her.
It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers. This
work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady, the duke,
and the Earl of Albemarle.
Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at Brighton,
with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and flimsy towers. The
second is the buckle which he invented and which Thackeray has
immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story of his marriage to
Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised upon him by the affection
of a good woman.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those that
have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as it is
perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear relating it;
for I believe that it is full of curious interest and pathetic power.
All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in their
chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant Royalist,
Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted the one part of
the story that is personal and not political. The tragic record of this French
girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a thousand times by writers in many
languages; yet almost all of them have neglected the brief romance which
followed her daring deed and which was consummated after her death upon
the guillotine. It is worth our while to speak first of Charlotte herself and of
the man she slew, and then to tell that other tale which ought always to be
entwined with her great deed of daring.
Charlotte Corday—Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand—was a
native of Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble
ancestors. Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and
soldiers, and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom
the French rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had
reduced her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants—a fact
which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her "the
Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution."
She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed in
charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.
After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here she
devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which the house
contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers, especially Voltaire,

and to some extent they destroyed her convent faith, though it is not likely
that she understood them very fully.
More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories
fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and heroism,
and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw away their
lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were her heroes.
To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that any one could
seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort of ecstasy, and longed
with all the passion of her nature that such a glorious fate might be her own.
Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French
Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her sympathies,
she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the suffering of the
peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all the oppression of the old
regime. But what she hoped for was a democracy of order and equality and
peace. Could the king reign as a constitutional monarch rather than as a
despot, this was all for which she cared.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans
known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same
peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the party of
the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence that soon was
to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the guillotine ran red with
noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head to the fatal knife.
Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath of suspicion or a
pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women to a gory death.
In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the
story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making Paris a
city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came to tell her
of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these horrors gradually
wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around the sinister and
repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing of his associates,
Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that she saw the monster
who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who reveled like some
arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.
In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure—an
accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and original
thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of Sciences. His

studies in electricity gained for him the admiration of Benjamin Franklin
and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to politics he left all this
career behind him. He plunged into the very mire of red republicanism, and
even there he was for a time so much hated that he sought refuge in London
to save his life.
On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place of
refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne
Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however, he
contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward
recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to behold.
It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the
provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness
against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte Corday
and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she might free her
country from this hideous tyrant.
In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and
the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity among
the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where Charlotte was
present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory. There was a plot to
march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt that such a scheme
must fail. It was then that she definitely formed the plan of going herself,
alone, to the French capital to seek out the hideous Marat and to kill him
with her own hands.
To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to visit
Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official description of the
girl. It reads:
Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age, five
feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes gray,
forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.
Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while
she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport seem
faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair which fell
about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great gray eyes spoke
eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet winsome, and her
form combined both strength and grace. Such is the girl who, on reaching
Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:

Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place
doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that
part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour. Be so
good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put you in such
condition as to render great service to France.
This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she
wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease had
reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water; and he
spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying in a large
tub.
A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and insisted
that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger from the
enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her mellow
voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.
As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in the
tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached him,
concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she had
purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she told
him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists were
plotting there.
To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:
"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days!"
As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her
strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and a
portion of his heart.
Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:
"Help, darling!"
His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,
for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded in
pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to
escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,
and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as of one
who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written charge was

read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head with a look of
infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:
"Nothing—except that I succeeded!"
A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,
declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm eyes
and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt. She showed her
quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough prosecutor, Fouquier-
Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she had accomplices.
"Who prompted you to do this deed?" roared Tinville.
"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient."
"In what, then, had Marat wronged you?"
"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France
in the fires of civil war."
"But whom did you expect to benefit?" insinuated the prosecutor.
"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand."
"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats?"
"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning."
Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap her
into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her to
death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.
This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief
romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there lived in
Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about Charlotte
Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl who had
been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand as a
murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan. Street
songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.
As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible creature.
He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the court-room
and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a beautiful
sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the eyes of Adam Lux
were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the picture he had
imagined!

A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman
peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely forth
from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an expression of
quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a bust indicative of
perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole expression one of almost
divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features that the painter was swiftly
putting upon his canvas; but behind them Adam Lux discerned the soul for
which he gladly sacrificed both his liberty and his life.
He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure
face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice. When
Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from the scene
and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he lay prostrate,
his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an instant won the
adoration of his heart.
Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.
On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting fit
for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses across the
sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of the guillotine.
Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river. Great drops of rain
fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful, unconscious of any wrong,
Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of the knife.
At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the
eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze. Thus
illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she bowed herself
beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if misdirected, impulse.
As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last and only plea:
"My duty is enough—the rest is nothing!"
Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven
upon his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the sunset
nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from those brilliant eyes.
The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The self-sacrifice of the only
woman he had ever loved, even though she had never so much as seen him,
impelled him with a sort of fury to his own destruction.

He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and of all
who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed, and scattered
copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last sentences are as follows:
The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar, from
which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed there on the
17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find it impossible at the
last moment to show the courage and the gentleness that were yours! I glory
because you are superior to me, for it is right that she who is adored should
be higher and more glorious than her adorer!
This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to
the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against the
Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this hot-
headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life. Therefore
he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was made him that he
might have passports that would allow him to return to Germany if only he
would sign a retraction of his printed words.
Little did the judges understand the fiery heart of the man they had to
deal with. To die on the same scaffold as the woman whom he had idealized
was to him the crowning triumph of his romantic love. He gave a prompt
and insolent refusal to their offer. He swore that if released he would
denounce his darling's murderers with a still greater passion.
In anger the tribunal sentenced him to death. Only then he smiled and
thanked his judges courteously, and soon after went blithely to the
guillotine like a bridegroom to his marriage feast.
Adam Lux! Spirit courtship had been carried on silently all through that
terrible cross-examination of Charlotte Corday. His heart was betrothed to
hers in that single gleam of the setting sun when she bowed beneath the
knife. One may believe that these two souls were finally united when the
same knife fell sullenly upon his neck and when his life-blood sprinkled the
altar that was still stained with hers.

NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life
of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into
account by the student of his imperial career. The great emperor was
susceptible to feminine charms at all times; but just as it used to be said of
him that "his smile never rose above his eyes," so it might as truly be said
that in most instances the throbbing of his heart did not affect his actions.
Women to him were the creatures of the moment, although he might
seem to care for them and to show his affection in extravagant ways, as in
his affair with Mlle. Georges, the beautiful but rather tiresome actress. As
for Mme. de Stael, she bored him to distraction by her assumption of
wisdom. That was not the kind of woman that Napoleon cared for. He
preferred that a woman should be womanly, and not a sort of owl to sit and
talk with him about the theory of government.
When it came to married women they interested him only because of the
children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate armies. At
the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about the gorgeous
drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he would snap out,
sharply:
"How many children have you?"
If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look
pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had
none he would turn upon her sharply and say:
"Then go home and have some!"
Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine,
because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him
through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young
soldier was fascinated by her—the more because she was older than he and
possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the world.
When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of the
army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne by ragged
troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of Austria.

She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the
greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held him to
the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was her failure to
do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry the thick-lipped
Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when he showed signs of
regret and said:
"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine!"
Marie Louise was of importance for a time—the short time when she
entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little King
of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her husband in
his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and letting her
son—l'Aiglon—die in a land that was far from France.
Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to
mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an
episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her
wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him into
one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when her great
brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave him all her
store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds, perhaps the most
superb of all gems known to the western world. She would gladly have
followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been permitted. Remaining
behind, she did everything possible in conspiring to secure his freedom.
But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little.
Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican
superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing
here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on the
emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.
On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of
Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with his
cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he seemed a
very demigod of battle.
True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and
overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically
driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had speedily
been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and most brilliant of

all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and Russia humbled to the very
ground before him.
Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put
into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great; but
these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the decisive
battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in the royal palace
of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the Prussian forces to
the Russian border.
As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by
thousands to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed
down to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a free
and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.
Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful
mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the Emperor of
Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles themselves to
win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant soldiers, who
believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting for the final
independence of their native land.
Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among the
Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something like
adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift what all
desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards. Princes and
nobles flocked about him. Those who stayed at home repeated wonderful
stories of his victories and prayed for him and fed the flame which spread
through all the country. It was felt that no sacrifice was too great to win his
favor; that to him, as to a deity, everything that he desired should be yielded
up, since he was to restore the liberty of Poland.
And hence, when the carriage of the emperor dashed into Bronia,
surrounded by Polish lancers and French cuirassiers, the enormous crowd
surged forward and blocked the way so that their hero could not pass
because of their cheers and cries and supplications.
In the midst of it all there came a voice of peculiar sweetness from the
thickest portion of the crowd.
"Please let me pass!" said the voice. "Let me see him, if only for a
moment!"

The populace rolled backward, and through the lane which they made a
beautiful girl with dark blue eyes that flamed and streaming hair that had
become loosened about her radiant face was confronting the emperor.
Carried away by her enthusiasm, she cried:
"Thrice welcome to Poland! We can do or say nothing to express our joy
in the country which you will surely deliver from its tyrant."
The emperor bowed and, with a smile, handed a great bouquet of roses to
the girl, for her beauty and her enthusiasm had made a deep impression on
him.
"Take it," said he, "as a proof of my admiration. I trust that I may have
the pleasure of meeting you at Warsaw and of hearing your thanks from
those beautiful lips."
In a moment more the trumpets rang out shrilly, the horsemen closed up
beside the imperial carriage, and it rolled away amid the tumultuous
shouting of the populace.
The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska,
descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When
she was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in
Poland, the Count Walewska. He was three or four times her age, yet her
dark blue eyes, her massive golden hair, and the exquisite grace of her
figure led him to plead that she might become his wife. She had accepted
him, but the marriage was that of a mere child, and her interest still centered
upon her country and took the form of patriotism rather than that of
wifehood and maternity.
It was for this reason that the young Countess had visited Bronia. She
was now eighteen years of age and still had the sort of romantic feeling
which led her to think that she would keep in some secret hiding-place the
bouquet which the greatest man alive had given her.
But Napoleon was not the sort of man to forget anything that had given
him either pleasure or the reverse. He who, at the height of his cares, could
recall instantly how many cannon were in each seaport of France and could
make out an accurate list of all his military stores; he who could call by
name every soldier in his guard, with a full remembrance of the battles each
man had fought in and the honors that he had won—he was not likely to
forget so lovely a face as the one which had gleamed with peculiar radiance
through the crowd at Bronia.

On reaching Warsaw he asked one or two well-informed persons about
this beautiful stranger. Only a few hours had passed before Prince
Poniatowski, accompanied by other nobles, called upon her at her home.
"I am directed, madam," said he, "by order of the Emperor of France, to
bid you to be present at a ball that is to be given in his honor to-morrow
evening."
Mme. Walewska was startled, and her face grew hot with blushes. Did
the emperor remember her escapade at Bronia? If so, how had he
discovered her? Why should he seek her out and do her such an honor?
"That, madam, is his imperial majesty's affair," Poniatowski told her. "I
merely obey his instructions and ask your presence at the ball. Perhaps
Heaven has marked you out to be the means of saving our unhappy
country."
In this way, by playing on her patriotism, Poniatowski almost persuaded
her, and yet something held her back. She trembled, though she was greatly
fascinated; and finally she refused to go.
Scarcely had the envoy left her, however, when a great company of
nobles entered in groups and begged her to humor the emperor. Finally her
own husband joined in their entreaties and actually commanded her to go;
so at last she was compelled to yield.
It was by no means the frank and radiant girl who was now preparing
again to meet the emperor. She knew not why, and yet her heart was full of
trepidation and nervous fright, the cause of which she could not guess, yet
which made her task a severe ordeal. She dressed herself in white satin,
with no adornment save a wreath of foliage in her hair.
As she entered the ballroom she was welcomed by hundreds whom she
had never seen before, but who were of the highest nobility of Poland.
Murmurs of admiration followed her, and finally Poniatowski came to her
and complimented her, besides bringing her a message that the emperor
desired her to dance with him.
"I am very sorry," she said, with a quiver of the lips, "but I really cannot
dance. Be kind enough to ask the emperor to excuse me."
But at that very moment she felt some strange magnetic influence; and
without looking up she could feel that Napoleon himself was standing by

her as she sat with blanched face and downcast eyes, not daring to look up
at him.
"White upon white is a mistake, madam," said the emperor, in his
gentlest tones. Then, stooping low, he whispered, "I had expected a far
different reception."
She neither smiled nor met his eyes. He stood there for a moment and
then passed on, leaving her to return to her home with a heavy heart. The
young countess felt that she had acted wrongly, and yet there was an
instinct—an instinct that she could not conquer.
In the gray of the morning, while she was still tossing feverishly, her
maid knocked at the door and brought her a hastily scribbled note. It ran as
follows:
I saw none but you, I admired none but you; I desire only you. Answer at
once, and calm the impatient ardor of—N.
These passionate words burned from her eyes the veil that had hidden the
truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an actual
verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets to hail the
possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she shrunk from him
when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough now. This bedside
missive meant that he had intended her dishonor and that he had looked
upon her simply as a possible mistress.
At once she crushed the note angrily in her hand.
"There is no answer at all," said she, bursting into bitter tears at the very
thought that he should dare to treat her in this way.
But on the following morning when she awoke her maid was standing
beside her with a second letter from Napoleon. She refused to open it and
placed it in a packet with the first letter, and ordered that both of them
should be returned to the emperor.
She shrank from speaking to her husband of what had happened, and
there was no one else in whom she dared confide. All through that day there
came hundreds of visitors, either of princely rank or men who had won
fame by their gallantry and courage. They all begged to see her, but to them
all she sent one answer—that she was ill and could see no one.
After a time her husband burst into her room, and insisted that she should
see them.

"Why," exclaimed he, "you are insulting the greatest men and the noblest
women of Poland! More than that, there are some of the most distinguished
Frenchmen sitting at your doorstep, as it were. There is Duroc, grand
marshal of France, and in refusing to see him you are insulting the great
emperor on whom depends everything that our country longs for. Napoleon
has invited you to a state dinner and you have given him no answer
whatever. I order you to rise at once and receive these ladies and gentlemen
who have done you so much honor!"
She could not refuse. Presently she appeared in her drawing-room, where
she was at once surrounded by an immense throng of her own countrymen
and countrywomen, who made no pretense of misunderstanding the
situation. To them, what was one woman's honor when compared with the
freedom and independence of their nation? She was overwhelmed by
arguments and entreaties. She was even accused of being disloyal to the
cause of Poland if she refused her consent.
One of the strangest documents of that period was a letter sent to her and
signed by the noblest men in Poland. It contained a powerful appeal to her
patriotism. One remarkable passage even quotes the Bible to point out her
line of duty. A portion of this letter ran as follows:
Did Esther, think you, give herself to Ahasuerus out of the fulness of her
love for him? So great was the terror with which he inspired her that she
fainted at the sight of him. We may therefore conclude that affection had
but little to do with her resolve. She sacrificed her own inclinations to the
salvation of her country, and that salvation it was her glory to achieve. May
we be enabled to say the same of you, to your glory and our own happiness!
After this letter came others from Napoleon himself, full of the most
humble pleading. It was not wholly distasteful thus to have the conqueror of
the world seek her out and offer her his adoration any more than it was
distasteful to think that the revival of her own nation depended on her single
will. M. Frederic Masson, whose minute studies regarding everything
relating to Napoleon have won him a seat in the French Academy, writes of
Marie Walewska at this time: Every force was now brought into play
against her. Her country, her friends, her religion, the Old and the New
Testaments, all urged her to yield; they all combined for the ruin of a simple
and inexperienced girl of eighteen who had no parents, whose husband even

thrust her into temptation, and whose friends thought that her downfall
would be her glory.
Amid all these powerful influences she consented to attend the dinner. To
her gratification Napoleon treated her with distant courtesy, and, in fact,
with a certain coldness.
"I heard that Mme. Walewska was indisposed. I trust that she has
recovered," was all the greeting that he gave her when they met.
Every one else with whom she spoke overwhelmed her with flattery and
with continued urging; but the emperor himself for a time acted as if she
had displeased him. This was consummate art; for as soon as she was
relieved of her fears she began to regret that she had thrown her power
away.
During the dinner she let her eyes wander to those of the emperor almost
in supplication. He, the subtlest of men, knew that he had won. His
marvelous eyes met hers and drew her attention to him as by an electric
current; and when the ladies left the great dining-room Napoleon sought her
out and whispered in her ear a few words of ardent love.
It was too little to alarm her seriously now. It was enough to make her
feel that magnetism which Napoleon knew so well how to evoke and
exercise. Again every one crowded about her with congratulations. Some
said:
"He never even saw any of US. His eyes were all for YOU! They flashed
fire as he looked at you."
"You have conquered his heart," others said, "and you can do what you
like with him. The salvation of Poland is in your hands."
The company broke up at an early hour, but Mme. Walewska was asked
to remain. When she was alone General Duroc—one of the emperor's
favorite officers and most trusted lieutenants—entered and placed a letter
from Napoleon in her lap. He tried to tell her as tactfully as possible how
much harm she was doing by refusing the imperial request. She was deeply
affected, and presently, when Duroc left her, she opened the letter which he
had given her and read it. It was worded thus:
There are times when all splendors become oppressive, as I feel but too
deeply at the present moment. How can I satisfy the desires of a heart that
yearns to cast itself at your feet, when its impulses are checked at every

point by considerations of the highest moment? Oh, if you would, you alone
might overcome the obstacles that keep us apart. MY FRIEND DUROC
WILL MAKE ALL EASY FOR YOU. Oh, come, come! Your every wish
shall be gratified! Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity on
my poor heart. N.
Every chance of escape seemed to be closed. She had Napoleon's own
word that he would free Poland in return for her self-sacrifice. Moreover,
her powers of resistance had been so weakened that, like many women, she
temporized. She decided that she would meet the emperor alone. She would
tell him that she did not love him, and yet would plead with him to save her
beloved country.
As she sat there every tick of the clock stirred her to a new excitement.
At last there came a knock upon the door, a cloak was thrown about her
from behind, a heavy veil was drooped about her golden hair, and she was
led, by whom she knew not, to the street, where a finely appointed carriage
was waiting for her.
No sooner had she entered it than she was driven rapidly through the
darkness to the beautifully carved entrance of a palace. Half led, half
carried, she was taken up the steps to a door which was eagerly opened by
some one within. There were warmth and light and color and the scent of
flowers as she was placed in a comfortable arm-chair. Her wrappings were
taken from her, the door was closed behind her; and then, as she looked up,
she found herself in the presence of Napoleon, who was kneeling at her feet
and uttering soothing words.
Wisely, the emperor used no violence. He merely argued with her; he told
her over and over his love for her; and finally he declared that for her sake
he would make Poland once again a strong and splendid kingdom.
Several hours passed. In the early morning, before daylight, there came a
knock at the door.
"Already?" said Napoleon. "Well, my plaintive dove, go home and rest.
You must not fear the eagle. In time you will come to love him, and in all
things you shall command him."
Then he led her to the door, but said that he would not open it unless she
promised to see him the next day—a promise which she gave the more
readily because he had treated her with such respect.

On the following morning her faithful maid came to her bedside with a
cluster of beautiful violets, a letter, and several daintily made morocco
cases. When these were opened there leaped out strings and necklaces of
exquisite diamonds, blazing in the morning sunlight. Mme. Walewska
seized the jewels and flung them across the room with an order that they
should be taken back at once to the imperial giver; but the letter, which was
in the same romantic strain as the others, she retained.
On that same evening there was another dinner, given to the emperor by
the nobles, and Marie Walewska attended it, but of course without the
diamonds, which she had returned. Nor did she wear the flowers which had
accompanied the diamonds.
When Napoleon met her he frowned upon her and made her tremble with
the cold glances that shot from his eyes of steel. He scarcely spoke to her
throughout the meal, but those who sat beside her were earnest in their
pleading.
Again she waited until the guests had gone away, and with a lighter heart,
since she felt that she had nothing to fear. But when she met Napoleon in
his private cabinet, alone, his mood was very different from that which he
had shown before. Instead of gentleness and consideration he was the
Napoleon of camps, and not of courts. He greeted her bruskly.
"I scarcely expected to see you again," said he. "Why did you refuse my
diamonds and my flowers? Why did you avoid my eyes at dinner? Your
coldness is an insult which I shall not brook." Then he raised his voice to
that rasping, almost blood-curdling tone which even his hardiest soldiers
dreaded: "I will have you know that I mean to conquer you. You SHALL—
yes, I repeat it, you SHALL love me! I have restored the name of your
country. It owes its very existence to me."
Then he resorted to a trick which he had played years before in dealing
with the Austrians at Campo Formio.
"See this watch which I am holding in my hand. Just as I dash it to
fragments before you, so will I shatter Poland if you drive me to
desperation by rejecting my heart and refusing me your own."
As he spoke he hurled the watch against the opposite wall with terrific
force, dashing it to pieces. In terror, Mme. Walewska fainted. When she
resumed consciousness there was Napoleon wiping away her tears with the
tenderness of a woman and with words of self-reproach.

The long siege was over. Napoleon had conquered, and this girl of
eighteen gave herself up to his caresses and endearments, thinking that,
after all, her love of country was more than her own honor.
Her husband, as a matter of form, put her away from him, though at heart
he approved what she had done, while the Polish people regarded her as
nothing less than a national heroine. To them she was no minister to the
vices of an emperor, but rather one who would make him love Poland for
her sake and restore its greatness.
So far as concerned his love for her, it was, indeed, almost idolatry. He
honored her in every way and spent all the time at his disposal in her
company. But his promise to restore Poland he never kept, and gradually
she found that he had never meant to keep it.
"I love your country," he would say, "and I am willing to aid in the
attempt to uphold its rights, but my first duty is to France. I cannot shed
French blood in a foreign cause."
By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for
his own sake. She could not resist his ardor, which matched the ardor of the
Poles themselves. Moreover, it flattered her to see the greatest soldier in the
world a suppliant for her smiles.
For some years she was Napoleon's close companion, spending long
hours with him and finally accompanying him to Paris. She was the mother
of Napoleon's only son who lived to manhood. This son, who bore the name
of Alexandre Florian de Walewski, was born in Poland in 1810, and later
was created a count and duke of the second French Empire. It may be said
parenthetically that he was a man of great ability. Living down to 1868, he
was made much of by Napoleon III., who placed him in high offices of
state, which he filled with distinction. In contrast with the Duc de Morny,
who was Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother, Alexandre de Walewski stood
out in brilliant contrast. He would have nothing to do with stock-jobbing
and unseemly speculation.
"I may be poor," he said—though he was not poor—"but at least I
remember the glory of my father and what is due to his great name."
As for Mme. Walewska, she was loyal to the emperor, and lacked the
greed of many women whom he had made his favorites. Even at Elba, when
he was in exile and disgrace, she visited him that she might endeavor to
console him. She was his counselor and friend as well as his earnestly loved

mate. When she died in Paris in 1817, while the dethroned emperor was a
prisoner at St. Helena, the word "Napoleon" was the last upon her lips.

THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and
kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once
declared:
"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do
them good."
It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far the
great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness, their
jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.
There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of
person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name we
think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on to
bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest
marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver; but
decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech to
women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the thousand
and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled—and perhaps in
part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion that her animus
was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial favor and had
failed to win it.
But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and palaces,
and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great man was not
merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a certain weakness
where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them prey upon him
almost without end.
He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character
with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in order to
give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was devotedly
fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes attest. His
passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her infidelity is almost
painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had been disillusioned, and
when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs a day to spy upon

Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with friendliness and allowed
her extravagance to embarrass him.
He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved
almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother,
Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty and
brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis, for
whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland, and
Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving at many
things which were inimical to France. He was planning high advancement
for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a disreputable actress
and fled with her to England, where he was received with pleasure by the
most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.
So much for his brothers—incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes.
But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which they
bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans," and
they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle and
monsters of ingratitude.
Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them—by Caroline and
Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall find
something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely superior to her
sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who showed fidelity and
gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even Mme. Mere, Napoleon's
mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him his great mental and
physical power, did nothing for him. At the height of his splendor she
hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:
"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last!"
Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred.
Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they became
respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very little—less,
in fact, than for any other member of his family—and yet she alone stood
by him to the end.
This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of
frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat,
nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to
tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because of her

underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte illustrious
for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to turn against his
former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in her fortunes with the Murats.
Pauline, as we shall see, had the one redeeming trait of gratitude.
To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what
used to be called "femininity." We have to-day another and a higher
definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern
writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman—"woman to the tips of her
rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted by her
loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty from her
pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been called.
Frederic Masson declares:
She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects
common to women reached their highest development, while her beauty
attained a perfection which may justly be called unique.
No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but
wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter lack
of anything like a moral sense.
Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took up
their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her wonderful
eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which she showed.
The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity. The future emperor
was then a captain of artillery and could give them but little out of his
scanty pay.
Pauline—or, as they called her in those days, Paulette—wore
unbecoming hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes.
None the less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them
Freron, a commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to
cause unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in
love with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love
letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is the end
of one of them:
I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my
beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love you,
the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!

This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in
love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never
gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to feel
the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as they had
never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and later a mansion
at Milan.
By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France
was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood?
Arnault says:
She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the
strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly
unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl—talking
incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most
serious persons of rank.
General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the
private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which they
had behind the scenes. He says:
The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and
slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in the
girls' room all the time when they were dressing.
Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed
to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen,
and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was
shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the
honor are interesting:
"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have dreams
of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams are seldom
realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them—"
And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort
of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the
offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his mighty
chief.
Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for
some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of
Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good

manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely the
sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional way; but it
served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere with his sister's
intrigues.
Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still in
manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made
commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous
black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the negroes.
Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly
refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of
pretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go on board the
flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely witch laughed in
his face and still persisted that she would never go.
Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.
"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order six
grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board forthwith."
And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set
sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and
Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a sort
of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly
obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her vanity
were beyond belief.
But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was
stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French army.
Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical climate.
Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline brought the
general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still recovering
from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid him the tribute
of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with him.
"What a touching tribute to her dead husband!" said some one to
Napoleon.
The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:
"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her
fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped."

Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other sisters—
or perhaps because he loved her better—was very strict with her. He
obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the proprieties; but it
was hard to keep her within bounds.
Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was
exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of the
fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was
crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure. He was
the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest collection of
diamonds in the world.
Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese.
Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon;
while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would
eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the
Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and
show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which she
could not resist.
The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house,
because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was
invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be the
triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that should be
absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a background
for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.
When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself
with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and
fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a moving
jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered her carriage
and drove out to Saint-Cloud.
But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great
subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green velvet,
and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most
uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the
diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind.
Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.
Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made the
Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet

displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most
generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline on
parting. The victory was hers.
There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady,
one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most
fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended, in
her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of her
toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological moment,
when all the guests had just assembled.
She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon the
assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume was
of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands, spotted
like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in turn were
supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied the head-dress
of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were cameos, and just
beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in place by an engraved
gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were bare. She had, in fact,
blotted out her rivals.
Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to
Pauline, who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began
gazing at the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a
moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to
a companion, in a tone of compassion:
"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT!"
"For what?" returned her escort.
"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."
Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and
looked wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme.
Coutades say:
"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"
Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,
her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless, forming
a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment no one
could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess wore her hair
low enough to cover them.

This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a very
daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of drapery is
thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this statue is absolutely
classical in its conception and execution, and its interest is heightened by
the fact that its model was what she afterward styled herself, with true
Napoleonic pride—"a sister of Bonaparte."
Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced
her; but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was
Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she got
behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of all the
nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye flashed
upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to her heels,
rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.
It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her
intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and of
the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of these
was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When some one
ventured to protest, she answered, naively:
"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"
And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and
marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with
propriety!
To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either
Caroline or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs
when she became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually
checking her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and
Napoleon was sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his
relatives to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and
went back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and
Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.
Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two francs,
while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the maintenance
of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would have thought
her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of her fortune. When he
escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815 she presented him with
all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them with him in his carriage at

Waterloo, where they were captured by the English. Contrast this with the
meanness and ingratitude of her sisters and her brothers, and one may well
believe that she was sincerely proud of what it meant to be la soeur de
Bonaparte.
When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not
accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of which she
was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When he died she
received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the particulars of that
long agony."
As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her last
moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince Borghese
and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she had lived—"the
queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked the servant to bring a
mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes; and then, as she sank back, it
was with a smile of deep content.
"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"

THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE
LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG
There is one famous woman whom history condemns while at the same
time it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the
judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress of
France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial Austria.
When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his overthrow in 1814,
was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba, the empress was already
about to become a mother; and the father of her unborn child was not
Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that is usually remembered of
her—that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that she abandoned him in the
hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself with readiness to one inferior in
rank, yet with whom she lived for years, and to whom she bore what a
French writer styled "a brood of bastards."
Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much
to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought
disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,
French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care to dwell
upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its greatest genius
and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian wife. Therefore
there are still many who know little beyond the bare fact that the Empress
Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess, her reputation as a wife,
and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to crouch in a sort of murky
byway, and those who pass over the highroad of history ignore it with
averted eyes.
In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von
Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you
straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does it
occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in literature
Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme in the early
chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of Thirty."

As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the case, giving
them in such order that their full significance may be understood.
In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself free
from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of his
marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she had
been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life together she had
been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her from habit which
was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the wrong which she had
done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive. And then
Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a son to
perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he had wrought
seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into nothingness when he
should die.
No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition
leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He
would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in
his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee
widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take to
himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.
At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander
entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to
evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far more
ancient than the Romanoffs—a family which had held the imperial dignity
for nearly six centuries—the oldest and the noblest blood in Europe. This
was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor Francis, had
thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess Marie Louise, was
then in her nineteenth year.
Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He
turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there were many
reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at any rate, ill-
omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian arch-duchess, Marie
Antionette, married to the ruler of France, had met her death upon the
scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who had always blamed
"the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in the flames of revolution.
Again, the father of the girl to whom Napoleon's fancy turned had been the
bitter enemy of the new regime in France. His troops had been beaten by

the French in five wars and had been crushed at Austerlitz and at Wagram.
Bonaparte had twice entered Vienna at the head of a conquering army, and
thrice he had slept in the imperial palace at Schonbrunn, while Francis was
fleeing through the dark, a beaten fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons
of French cavalry.
The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished
toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor. He was
the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood; Napoleon
was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished thrones and set
an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred titles of king and prince
to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed the swaggering brutality of
the camp and the stable whence they sprang. Yet, just because an alliance
with the Austrian house seemed in so many ways impossible, the thought of
it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all the more.
"Impossible?" he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible'
is not French."
The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite
possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with Austria
by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of the Hapsburgs
to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped from Francis
province after province. He had even let fall hints that the Hapsburgs might
be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from the map of Europe, to
be divided between himself and the Russian Czar, who was still his ally. It
was at this psychological moment that the Czar wounded Napoleon's pride
by refusing to give the hand of his sister Anne.
The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance. Prince
Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a man-eating-
tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a fitting bride for
the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded vanity of Napoleon.
From that moment events moved swiftly; and before long it was understood
that there was to be a new empress in France, and that she was to be none
other than the daughter of the man who had been Napoleon's most
persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to be given—sacrificed, if
you like—to appease an imperial adventurer. After such a marriage, Austria
would be safe from spoliation. The reigning dynasty would remain firmly
seated upon its historic throne.

But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken
of as a sort of ogre—a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy of
her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a year
before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on her father. In
public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a coward and a liar.
Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to her imagination a blood-
stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster, outside the pale of human
liking and respect. What must have been her thoughts when her father first
told her with averted face that she was to become the bride of such a being?
Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then
brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was a tall
blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face which
might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so gentle, but in
which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her complexion was rosy,
with that peculiar tinge which means that in the course of time it will
become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear and childish. Her figure
was good, though already too full for a girl who was younger than her
years.
She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one being
the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous—a feature which has remained
for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg blood. One sees it
in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen Regent of Spain, and in
the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the artists who made miniatures or
paintings of Marie Louise softened down this racial mark so that no
likeness of her shows it as it really was. But take her all in all, she was a
simple, childlike, German madchen who knew nothing of the outside world
except what she had heard from her discreet and watchful governess, and
what had been told her of Napoleon by her uncles, the archdukes whom he
had beaten down in battle.
When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her
girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital was this
union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread she questioned
the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.
"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is
our friend."

Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl she
was, yielded her own will.
Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally.
Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was already
astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure the
continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her husband.
Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:
"This is the first and most important thing—she must have children."
To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter—an odd
letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor of a
lover:
MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have
inspired in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making my
request to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the
happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand
the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it will
not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However slightly
the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I wish to cultivate
them with so great care, and to endeavor so constantly to please you in
everything, that I flatter myself that some day I shall prove attractive to you.
This is the end at which I desire to arrive, and for which I pray your
highness to be favorable to me.
Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl.
She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only
ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a
necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn upon.
Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed before her
eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the Parisian shops were
spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for the princess who was soon
to become the bride of the man who had mastered continental Europe.
The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which
would show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who
had married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last
detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and
presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister, of
whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my sisters,

as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers." Caroline, by virtue of her
rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's future bride. Also,
there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal, Berthier, Prince of
Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just been created Prince of
Wagram—a title which, very naturally, he did not use in Austria. He was to
act as proxy for Napoleon in the preliminary marriage service at Vienna.
All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished
under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations and
balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's interest; and the
excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be flattered, and yet there
were many hours when her heart misgave her. More than once she was
found in tears. Her father, an affectionate though narrow soul, spent an
entire day with her consoling and reassuring her. One thought she always
kept in mind—what she had said to Metternich at the very first: "I want
only what my duty bids me want." At last came the official marriage, by
proxy, in the presence of a splendid gathering. The various documents were
signed, the dowry was arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At
the opera there were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father
a sad farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with
tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage, while
cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful peal.
She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled
with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of
attendant menials. The young bride—the wife of a man whom she had
never seen—was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station in
the outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father, which are a
commentary upon her state of mind:
I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to
endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He will
help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my duty
toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.
There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl going to
encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically to the one
thought—that whatever might befall her, she was doing as her father
wished.

One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over
wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She was
surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every town
the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared at her
with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on. Each
morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great cluster of
fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown husband who was to
meet her at her journey's end.
There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused—
the journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to himself,
to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!
What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past she
was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was fearful
with a shuddering fear.
At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into a
sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian, while the
middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French. Here she was
received by those who were afterward to surround her—the representatives
of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and children of the
Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time Napoleon had
gathered around himself some of the noblest families of France, who had
rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant one. There were
Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance. But to Marie
Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike. They were French,
they were strangers, and she shrank from them.
Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus
far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point. Even
her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not allowed
to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose to have
nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which she clung as a
girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was surrounded only

by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only by salvos of
French artillery.
In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment
of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.
Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but that
restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor of a new
passion, that passion was all the greater because he had never yet set eyes
upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess flattered his ambition.
The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his whole being with a thrill of
novelty. The painted charms of Josephine, the mercenary favors of
actresses, the calculated ecstasies of the women of the court who gave
themselves to him from vanity, had long since palled upon him. Therefore
the impatience with which he awaited the coming of Marie Louise became
every day more tense.
For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last details
the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He organized them as
minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army. He showed himself
as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those great strategic
combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of Europe. But after all
had been arranged—even to the illuminations, the cheering, the salutes, and
the etiquette of the court—he fell into a fever of impatience which gave him
sleepless nights and frantic days. He paced up and down the Tuileries,
almost beside himself. He hurried off courier after courier with orders that
the postilions should lash their horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer
still. He scribbled love letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-
studded portrait of the woman who was hurrying toward him.
At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage and
hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had been
arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to escort her to
the capital, so that they might be married in the great gallery of the Louvre.
At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart for Napoleon's
convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to Marie Louise and her
attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into the place, drawn by
horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor could not restrain himself.
It was raining torrents and night was coming on, yet, none the less, he
shouted for fresh horses and pushed on to Soissons, where the new empress

was to stop and dine. When he reached there and she had not arrived, new
relays of horses were demanded, and he hurried off once more into the dark.
At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding in
advance of the empress's cortege.
"She will be here in a few moments!" cried Napoleon; and he leaped
from his carriage into the highway.
The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched
doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat
reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the
sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the mud the
one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been waiting. It
was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it, half-fainting with
fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark, alone.
Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he
have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration
which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he
was an emperor and that the girl—timid and shuddering—was a princess,
her future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased
to think of anything except his own desires.
He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the
leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
emperor!" And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered being
whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The door was
closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set out at a gallop
for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the mercy of pure animal
passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of rough kisses, and yielding
herself in terror to the caresses of wanton hands.
At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still
in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much
care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken place,
Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the
ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to the
chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial pair
and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little ceremony, the
lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of emperors was left to
the tender mercies of one who always had about him something of the

common soldier—the man who lives for loot and lust.... At eleven the next
morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed by the ladies of her
household.
These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call to
mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night could
not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention, or by all
the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then forty-one—practically
the same age as his new wife's father, the Austrian emperor; Marie Louise
was barely nineteen and younger than her years. Her master must have
seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles had described.
Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their
marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents tell
you?" And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to obey
you in everything." But, though she gave compliance, and though her
freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something concealed
within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily said to a
member of the court:
"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the world
—gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses."
Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very heart
of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him secretly. Somewhat
later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court to Paris.
"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with the
empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions. Even
should I do so, I now forbid your answering me."
Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he
returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a
pair of interrogation-points.
"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to her?"
Metternich bowed and made no answer.
"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that she
is happy. Tell me, did she not say so?"
The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.
"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with
another bow.

We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted
herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became
infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of honor.
He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the memory of
his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it all. He was
jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle Josephine. Constant
has recorded that the greatest precautions were taken to prevent any person
whatsoever, and especially any man, from approaching the empress save in
the presence of witnesses.
Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor.
Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His
shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new
costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in
despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals, he now sat
at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a character which it
had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either his public duty or his
private pleasure for any woman. Even in the first ardor of his marriage with
Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart to her in letters from Italian
battle-fields, he did so only after he had made the disposition of his troops
and had planned his movements for the following day. Now, however, he
was not merely devoted, but uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the
little King of Rome, he ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had
founded a dynasty. He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the
principles of the Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other
monarchs, by the grace of God.
As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat
haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied Napoleon's
every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can scarcely doubt that
her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and that her devotion was the
devotion of a dog which has been beaten into subjection.
Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her
appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the
disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that
year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played, as
was said, to "a parterre of kings." This was the climax of his magnificence,
for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who were his allies

and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army to six hundred
thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt to the full the
intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister coincidence it was here that
she first met the other man, then unnoticed and little heeded, who was to
cast upon her a fascination which in the end proved irresistible.
This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something
mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his silent
warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an Austrian
officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in a skirmish,
he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but resisted
desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right side of his
face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of his right eye,
so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to wear a black bandage to
conceal the mutilation.
From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving
against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the
Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced
Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse to the
rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's success enraged
Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a fiend.
Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he
concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he
tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was
comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued
intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808 Napoleon
wrote this significant sentence:
The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the
French.
Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this
Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!
Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old nobility
of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist, and he was a
diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he was a handsome
and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and one who bore
himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance. According to
Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the hearts of many

women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an Italian woman named
Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her husband. She had borne
him five children; and in 1813 he had married her in order that these
children might be made legitimate.
In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as
Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of battle he
had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and, strangely enough,
had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the golden eagle of the
Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him minister of Austria at the
court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the train of intrigue which was to
detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause. In 1812, as has just been said, he
was with Marie Louise for a short time at Dresden, hovering about her,
already forming schemes. Two years after this he overthrew Murat at
Naples; and then hurried on post-haste to urge Prince Eugene to abandon
Bonaparte.
When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon, fighting
with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united armies of
Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon be able to
separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when Napoleon was sent to
Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical Austrian diplomats
resolved that she should never again meet her imperial husband. She was
made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out for her new possessions; and
the man with the black band across his sightless eye was chosen to be her
escort and companion.
When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at
Milan. A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he remarked,
with cynical frankness:
"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband."
He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed
slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the
great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight
attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little son, the
King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers; but every
message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination.
Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was
happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the

romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her
side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him she
passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone songs of
love. He seemed romantic with a touch of mystery, a gallant soldier whose
soul was also touched by sentiment.
One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial line,
would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far inferior to
herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was less than nothing.
Even granting that she had never really loved Napoleon, she might still
have preferred to maintain her dignity, to share his fate, and to go down in
history as the empress of the greatest man whom modern times have
known.
But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance
of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid the
rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he touched
her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his way tried to
make amends; but the horror of that first night had never wholly left her
memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of sensuality, but her
heart had not been given to him. She had been his empress. In a sense it
might be more true to say that she had been his mistress. But she had never
been duly wooed and won and made his wife—an experience which is the
right of every woman. And so this Neipperg, with his deferential manners,
his soothing voice, his magnetic touch, his ardor, and his devotion,
appeased that craving which the master of a hundred legions could not
satisfy.
In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the
psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to his
words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which masters
pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms, yielding to his
caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him no more except
by death.
From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with
her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very letter.
Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie Louise and
Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three children were born
to them before his death in 1829.

It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her
by the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news was
brought her she observed, casually:
"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein.
Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it?"
Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when
no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his
thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and
constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by Sir
Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:
"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two
years I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has
been on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them in
the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure. The
barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have carefully
prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting them."
At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high
magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of
showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against her.
Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may find.
In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly before his death
he said to his physician, Antommarchi:
"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the spirits
of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise. You will
please tell her that I tenderly loved her—that I never ceased to love her. You
will relate to her all that you have seen, and every particular respecting my
situation and death."
The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the taint of
grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in it—the lesson that
true love cannot be forced or summoned at command, that it is destroyed
before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out only when evoked by
sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.
END OF VOLUME TWO

THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON
Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up on
any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the conspicuous
letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every one who saw the
inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old hoss!" The three
letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to go to Texas in those days
meant his moral, mental, and financial dilapidation. Either he had plunged
into bankruptcy and wished to begin life over again in a new world, or the
sheriff had a warrant for his arrest.
The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran
their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from
moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and
where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form—all
this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the emigrants
who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses. Other daring
pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks upon the swollen rivers.
Still others descended from the mountains of Tennessee and passed through
a more open country and with a greater certainty of self-protection, because
they were trained from childhood to wield the rifle and the long sheath-
knife.
It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amid all this
suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between "the quality"
and those who had no claim to be patricians. "The quality" was made up of
such emigrants as came from the more civilized East, or who had slaves, or
who dragged with them some rickety vehicle with carriage-horses—
however gaunt the animals might be. All others—those who had no slaves
or horses, and no traditions of the older states—were classed as "poor
whites"; and they accepted their mediocrity without a murmur.
Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with his
family to Tennessee, young Sam Houston—a truly eponymous American
hero—was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, he
reached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boy came

from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiar with some
of the classics in translation.
When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of more
than six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkable rough-and-tumble
fighter, and as quick with his long knife as any Indian. This made him a
notable figure—the more so as he never abused his strength and courage.
He was never known as anything but "Sam." In his own sphere he passed
for a gentleman and a scholar, thanks to his Virginian birth and to the fact
that he could repeat a great part of Pope's translation of the "Iliad."
His learning led him to teach school a few months in the year to the
children of the white settlers. Indeed, Houston was so much taken with the
pursuit of scholarship that he made up his mind to learn Greek and Latin.
Naturally, this seemed mere foolishness to his mother, his six strapping
brothers, and his three stalwart sisters, who cared little for study. So sharp
was the difference between Sam and the rest of the family that he gave up
his yearning after the classics and went to the other extreme by leaving
home and plunging into the heart of the forest beyond sight of any white
man or woman or any thought of Hellas and ancient Rome.
Here in the dimly lighted glades he was most happy. The Indians admired
him for his woodcraft and for the skill with which he chased the wild game
amid the forests. From his copy of the "Iliad" he would read to them the
thoughts of the world's greatest poet.
It is told that nearly forty years after, when Houston had long led a
different life and had made his home in Washington, a deputation of more
than forty untamed Indians from Texas arrived there under the charge of
several army officers. They chanced to meet Sam Houston.
One and all ran to him, clasped him in their brawny arms, hugged him
like bears to their naked breasts, and called him "father." Beneath the
copper skin and thick paint the blood rushed, and their faces changed, and
the lips of many a warrior trembled, although the Indian may not weep.
In the gigantic form of Houston, on whose ample brow the beneficent
love of a father was struggling with the sternness of the patriarch and
warrior, we saw civilization awing the savage at his feet. We needed no
interpreter to tell us that this impressive supremacy was gained in the forest.
His family had been at first alarmed by his stay among the Indians; but
when after a time he returned for a new outfit they saw that he was entirely

safe and left him to wander among the red men. Later he came forth and
resumed the pursuits of civilization. He took up his studies; he learned the
rudiments of law and entered upon its active practice. When barely thirty-
six he had won every office that was open to him, ending with his election
to the Governorship of Tennessee in 1827.
Then came a strange episode which changed the whole course of his life.
Until then the love of woman had never stirred his veins. His physical
activities in the forests, his unique intimacy with Indian life, had kept him
away from the social intercourse of towns and cities. In Nashville Houston
came to know for the first time the fascination of feminine society. As a
lawyer, a politician, and the holder of important offices he could not keep
aloof from that gentler and more winning influence which had hitherto been
unknown to him.
In 1828 Governor Houston was obliged to visit different portions of the
state, stopping, as was the custom, to visit at the homes of "the quality," and
to be introduced to wives and daughters as well as to their sportsman sons.
On one of his official journeys he met Miss Eliza Allen, a daughter of one
of the "influential families" of Sumner County, on the northern border of
Tennessee. He found her responsive, charming, and greatly to be admired.
She was a slender type of Southern beauty, well calculated to gain the
affection of a lover, and especially of one whose associations had been
chiefly with the women of frontier communities.
To meet a girl who had refined tastes and wide reading, and who was at
the same time graceful and full of humor, must have come as a pleasant
experience to Houston. He and Miss Allen saw much of each other, and few
of their friends were surprised when the word went forth that they were
engaged to be married.
The marriage occurred in January, 1829. They were surrounded with
friends of all classes and ranks, for Houston was the associate of Jackson
and was immensely popular in his own state. He seemed to have before him
a brilliant career. He had won a lovely bride to make a home for him; so
that no man seemed to have more attractive prospects. What was there
which at this time interposed in some malignant way to blight his future?
It was a little more than a month after his marriage when he met a friend,
and, taking him out into a strip of quiet woodland, said to him:

"I have something to tell you, but you must not ask me anything about it.
My wife and I will separate before long. She will return to her father's,
while I must make my way alone."
Houston's friend seized him by the arm and gazed at him with horror.
"Governor," said he, "you're going to ruin your whole life! What reason
have you for treating this young lady in such a way? What has she done that
you should leave her? Or what have you done that she should leave you?
Every one will fall away from you."
Houston grimly replied:
"I have no explanation to give you. My wife has none to give you. She
will not complain of me, nor shall I complain of her. It is no one's business
in the world except our own. Any interference will be impertinent, and I
shall punish it with my own hand."
"But," said his friend, "think of it. The people at large will not allow such
action. They will believe that you, who have been their idol, have
descended to insult a woman. Your political career is ended. It will not be
safe for you to walk the streets!"
"What difference does it make to me?" said Houston, gloomily. "What
must be, must be. I tell you, as a friend, in advance, so that you may be
prepared; but the parting will take place very soon."
Little was heard for another month or two, and then came the
announcement that the Governor's wife had left him and had returned to her
parents' home. The news flew like wildfire, and was the theme of every
tongue. Friends of Mrs. Houston begged her to tell them the meaning of the
whole affair. Adherents of Houston, on the other hand, set afloat stories of
his wife's coldness and of her peevishness. The state was divided into
factions; and what really concerned a very few was, as usual, made
everybody's business.
There were times when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his
former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again,
there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves
in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston as
a hero and who believed that he could not possibly have done wrong.
However his friends might rage, and however her people might wonder
and seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side. The

abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was equally
reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank deeply and
was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be persuaded to
say a single word about his wife.
The whole thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that
we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in
mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with
some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with
Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that
Houston, learning the facts, left her because he knew that her heart was not
really his.
But the evidence is all against this. Had it been so she would surely have
secured a divorce and would then have married the man whom she truly
loved. As a matter of fact, although she did divorce Houston, it was only
after several years, and the man whom she subsequently married was not
acquainted with her at the time of the separation.
Another theory suggests that Houston was harsh in his treatment of his
wife, and offended her by his untaught manners and extreme self-conceit.
But it is not likely that she objected to his manners, since she had become
familiar with them before she gave him her hand; and as to his conceit,
there is no evidence that it was as yet unduly developed. After his Texan
campaign he sometimes showed a rather lofty idea of his own
achievements; but he does not seem to have done so in these early days.
Some have ascribed the separation to his passion for drink; but here again
we must discriminate. Later in life he became very fond of spirits and drank
whisky with the Indians, but during his earlier years he was most
abstemious. It scarcely seems possible that his wife left him because he was
intemperate.
If one wishes to construct a reasonable hypothesis on a subject where the
facts are either wanting or conflicting, it is not impossible to suggest a
solution of this puzzle about Houston. Although his abandoned wife never
spoke of him and shut her lips tightly when she was questioned about him,
Houston, on his part, was not so taciturn. He never consciously gave any
direct clue to his matrimonial mystery; but he never forgot this girl who was
his bride and whom he seems always to have loved. In what he said he
never ceased to let a vein of self-reproach run through his words.

I should choose this one paragraph as the most significant. It was written
immediately after they had parted:
Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste
wife, and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever shall.
She was cold to me, and I thought she did not love me.
And again he said to an old and valued friend at about the same time:
"I can make no explanation. I exonerate the lady fully and do not justify
myself."
Miss Allen seems to have been a woman of the sensitive American type
which was so common in the early and the middle part of the last century.
Mrs. Trollope has described it for us with very little exaggeration. Dickens
has drawn it with a touch of malice, and yet not without truth. Miss
Martineau described it during her visit to this country, and her account quite
coincides with those of her two contemporaries.
Indeed, American women of that time unconsciously described
themselves in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less
striking type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the
earlier novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a
reign of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy." It
was a die-away, unwholesome attitude toward life and was morbid to the
last degree.
In circles where these ideas prevailed, to eat a hearty dinner was
considered unwomanly. To talk of anything except some gilded "annual," or
"book of beauty," or the gossip of the neighborhood was wholly to be
condemned. The typical girl of such a community was thin and slender and
given to a mild starvation, though she might eat quantities of jam and
pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and an
almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.
Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having
lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying the
unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of the
woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been bred in an
entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little reservations and
dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and reserve. Their
mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the woman of the
sheltered life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There
was a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side,
probably thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man.
He, on the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his
wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors with like
ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by thousands of men
and women at the beginning of their married lives—the mistake on one side
of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of too great warmth of
passion.
This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many things
in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing on the
history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the slights and
gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of Tennessee, and
left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure with mystery.
There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he
was next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before
adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife and
rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant defender
of the Indians.
When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted
brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier garb.
One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston, who
leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of
Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was arrested,
imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson, remitted his
imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.
Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised
much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early days
something has already been said. Houston found a rough American
settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed
frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the settlers had
formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and multiplied they
framed a simple code of laws.
Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans.
The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked for
admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and

despised them because they made no military display and had no very
accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged clothing;
but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried surely.
Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them were
gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican
regulars.
In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across
the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed
and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little
garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but then
an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The
Americans numbered less than three hundred men.
A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans
drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to oppose
to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days, and finally
the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison, who were now
reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and every one of
the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to death. The only
survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a woman, and a baby girl.
When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to
the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty
Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out
against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with nothing
but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and
countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San
Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved
upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the
Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:
"Remember the Alamo!"
With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's
lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander
was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to Texas
as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first president.
This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with
something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took an
Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very beautiful

woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers. Very little,
however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still—in 1840—he
married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette Lea. He
was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only twenty-one; but
again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but domestic tranquillity.
These later experiences go far to prove the truth of what has already been
given as the probable cause of his first mysterious failure to make a woman
happy.
After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the
United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1852, 1856,
and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement looking toward
secession, he was regarded as a possible presidential candidate; but his
career was now almost over, and in 1863, while the Civil War—which he
had striven to prevent—was at its height, he died.

LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF
BAVARIA
Lola Montez! The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs
and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with a
sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the name;
and in truth Lola Montez justified the mental picture.
She was not altogether Spanish, yet the other elements that entered into
her mercurial nature heightened and vivified her Castilian traits. Her mother
was a Spaniard—partly Moorish, however. Her father was an Irishman.
There you have it—the dreamy romance of Spain, the exotic touch of the
Orient, and the daring, unreasoning vivacity of the Celt.
This woman during the forty-three years of her life had adventures
innumerable, was widely known in Europe and America, and actually lost
one king his throne. Her maiden name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna
Gilbert. Her father was a British officer, the son of an Irish knight, Sir
Edward Gilbert. Her mother had been a danseuse named Lola Oliver.
"Lola" is a diminutive of Dolores, and as "Lola" she became known to the
world.
She lived at one time or another in nearly all the countries of Europe, and
likewise in India, America, and Australia. It would be impossible to set
down here all the sensations that she achieved. Let us select the climax of
her career and show how she overturned a kingdom, passing but lightly
over her early and her later years.
She was born in Limerick in 1818, but her father's parents cast off their
son and his young wife, the Spanish dancer. They went to India, and in
1825 the father died, leaving his young widow without a rupee; but she was
quickly married again, this time to an officer of importance.
The former danseuse became a very conventional person, a fit match for
her highly conventional husband; but the small daughter did not take kindly
to the proprieties of life. The Hindu servants taught her more things than
she should have known; and at one time her stepfather found her

performing the danse du ventre. It was the Moorish strain inherited from her
mother.
She was sent back to Europe, however, and had a sort of education in
Scotland and England, and finally in Paris, where she was detected in an
incipient flirtation with her music-master. There were other persons hanging
about her from her fifteenth year, at which time her stepfather, in India, had
arranged a marriage between her and a rich but uninteresting old judge. One
of her numerous admirers told her this.
"What on earth am I to do?" asked little Lola, most naively.
"Why, marry me," said the artful adviser, who was Captain Thomas
James; and so the very next day they fled to Dublin and were speedily
married at Meath.
Lola's husband was violently in love with her, but, unfortunately, others
were no less susceptible to her charms. She was presented at the vice-regal
court, and everybody there became her victim. Even the viceroy, Lord
Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's position was such
that Captain James could not object to his attentions, though they made the
husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw her into alcoves and
engage her in flattering conversation, while poor James could only gnaw his
nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon his heart. His only recourse was
to take her into the country, where she speedily became bored; and boredom
is the death of love.
Later she went with Captain James to India. She endured a campaign in
Afghanistan, in which she thoroughly enjoyed herself because of the
attentions of the officers. On her return to London in 1842, one Captain
Lennox was a fellow passenger; and their association resulted in an action
for divorce, by which she was freed from her husband, and yet by a
technicality was not able to marry Lennox, whose family in any case would
probably have prevented the wedding.
Mrs. Mayne says, in writing on this point:
Even Lola never quite succeeded in being allowed to commit bigamy
unmolested, though in later years she did commit it and took refuge in
Spain to escape punishment.
The same writer has given a vivid picture of what happened soon after
the divorce. Lola tried to forget her past and to create a new and brighter

future. Here is the narrative:
Her Majesty's Theater was crowded on the night of June 10,1843. A new
Spanish dancer was announced—"Dona Lola Montez." It was her debut,
and Lumley, the manager, had been puffing her beforehand, as he alone
knew how. To Lord Ranelagh, the leader of the dilettante group of
fashionable young men, he had whispered, mysteriously:
"I have a surprise in store. You shall see."
So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes, those
tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was pronounced.
Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the packed house
was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty, said report—and
then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni, Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all
were to be eclipsed.
Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the moment
her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of
admiration—but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance. A
sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very graceful,
"like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the stage"—not a
dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made no sign.
Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry
words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with anger,
opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s!" taken up by the
other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily even than before
—the historic words which sealed Lola's doom at Her Majesty's Theater:
"WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES!"
She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola
Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful
virago, making a sensation—as the French would say, a succes de scandale
—by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on one occasion
horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the King of Prussia.
In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would not have her.
She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she sought to attract
attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the spectators, flinging her
garters in their faces, and one time removing her skirts and still more
necessary garments, whereupon her manager broke off his engagement with
her.

An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often
about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except
"her beauty and her impudence." She had no talent nor any of the graces
which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The
clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her
lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand francs
and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the streets as she
did in Warsaw.
She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country
was then governed by Ludwig I., a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He was
a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For instance,
he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He prowled around
the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he chanced to meet. Like
his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II., he wrote poetry, and he had a
picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the beautiful women whom he had
met.
He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat, and
what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd and
peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at the
Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to the
palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying as he did
so:
"Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend."
In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of
Countess of Landsfeld. A handsome house was built for her, and a pension
of twenty thousand florins was granted her. This was in 1847. With the
people of Munich she was unpopular. They did not mind the eccentricities
of the king, since these amused them and did the country no perceptible
harm; but they were enraged by this beautiful woman, who had no softness
such as a woman ought to have. Her swearing, her readiness to box the ears
of every one whom she disliked, the huge bulldog which accompanied her
everywhere—all these things were beyond endurance.
She was discourteous to the queen, besides meddling with the politics of
the kingdom. Either of these things would have been sufficient to make her
hated. Together, they were more than the city of Munich could endure.
Finally the countess tried to establish a new corps in the university. This

was the last touch of all. A student who ventured to wear her colors was
beaten and arrested. Lola came to his aid with all her wonted boldness; but
the city was in commotion.
Daggers were drawn; Lola was hustled and insulted. The foolish king
rushed out to protect her; and on his arm she was led in safety to the palace.
As she entered the gates she turned and fired a pistol into the mob. No one
was hurt, but a great rage took possession of the people. The king issued a
decree closing the university for a year. By this time, however, Munich was
in possession of a mob, and the Bavarians demanded that she should leave
the country.
Ludwig faced the chamber of peers, where the demand of the populace
was placed before him.
"I would rather lose my crown!" he replied.
The lords of Bavaria regarded him with grim silence; and in their eyes he
read the determination of his people. On the following day a royal decree
revoked Lola's rights as a subject of Bavaria, and still another decree
ordered her to be expelled. The mob yelled with joy and burned her house.
Poor Ludwig watched the tumult by the light of the leaping flames.
He was still in love with her and tried to keep her in the kingdom; but the
result was that Ludwig himself was forced to abdicate. He had given his
throne for the light love of this beautiful but half-crazy woman. She would
have no more to do with him; and as for him, he had to give place to his son
Maximilian. Ludwig had lost a kingdom merely because this strange,
outrageous creature had piqued him and made him think that she was
unique among women.
The rest of her career was adventurous. In England she contracted a
bigamous marriage with a youthful officer, and within two weeks they fled
to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she made
still another marriage. She visited Australia, and at Melbourne she had a
fight with a strapping woman, who clawed her face until Lola fell fainting
to the ground. It is a squalid record of horse-whippings, face-scratchings—
in short, a rowdy life.
Her end was like that of Becky Sharp. In America she delivered lectures
which were written for her by a clergyman and which dealt with the art of
beauty. She had a temporary success; but soon she became quite poor, and
took to piety, professing to be a sort of piteous, penitent Magdalen. In this

role she made effective use of her beautiful dark hair, her pallor, and her
wonderful eyes. But the violence of her disposition had wrecked her
physically; and she died of paralysis in Astoria, on Long Island, in 1861.
Upon her grave in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, there is a tablet to her
memory, bearing the inscription: "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died
1861."
What can one say of a woman such as this? She had no morals, and her
manners were outrageous. The love she felt was the love of a she-wolf.
Fourteen biographies of her have been written, besides her own
autobiography, which was called The Story of a Penitent, and which tells
less about her than any of the other books. Her beauty was undeniable. Her
courage was the blended courage of the Celt, the Spaniard, and the Moor.
Yet all that one can say of her was said by the elder Dumas when he
declared that she was born to be the evil genius of every one who cared for
her. Her greatest fame comes from the fact that in less than three years she
overturned a kingdom and lost a king his throne.

LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON
The present French Republic has endured for over forty years. Within
that time it has produced just one man of extraordinary power and parts.
This was Leon Gambetta. Other men as remarkable as he were conspicuous
in French political life during the first few years of the republic; but they
belonged to an earlier generation, while Gambetta leaped into prominence
only when the empire fell, crashing down in ruin and disaster.
It is still too early to form an accurate estimate of him as a statesman. His
friends praise him extravagantly. His enemies still revile him bitterly. The
period of his political career lasted for little more than a decade, yet in that
time it may be said that he lived almost a life of fifty years. Only a short
time ago did the French government cause his body to be placed within the
great Pantheon, which contains memorials of the heroes and heroines of
France. But, though we may not fairly judge of his political motives, we can
readily reconstruct a picture of him as a man, and in doing so recall his one
romance, which many will remember after they have forgotten his
oratorical triumphs and his statecraft.
Leon Gambetta was the true type of the southern Frenchman—what his
countrymen call a meridional. The Frenchman of the south is different from
the Frenchman of the north, for the latter has in his veins a touch of the
viking blood, so that he is very apt to be fair-haired and blue-eyed,
temperate in speech, and self-controlled. He is different, again, from the
Frenchman of central France, who is almost purely Celtic. The meridional
has a marked vein of the Italian in him, derived from the conquerors of
ancient Gaul. He is impulsive, ardent, fiery in speech, hot-tempered, and
vivacious to an extraordinary degree.
Gambetta, who was born at Cahors, was French only on his mother's
side, since his father was of Italian birth. It is said also that somewhere in
his ancestry there was a touch of the Oriental. At any rate, he was one of the
most southern of the sons of southern France, and he showed the precocious
maturity which belongs to a certain type of Italian. At twenty-one he had
already been admitted to the French bar, and had drifted to Paris, where his

audacity, his pushing nature, and his red-hot un-restraint of speech gave him
a certain notoriety from the very first.
It was toward the end of the reign of Napoleon III. that Gambetta saw his
opportunity. The emperor, weakened by disease and yielding to a sort of
feeble idealism, gave to France a greater freedom of speech than it had
enjoyed while he was more virile. This relaxation of control merely gave to
his opponents more courage to attack him and his empire. Demagogues
harangued the crowds in words which would once have led to their
imprisonment. In the National Assembly the opposition did all within its
power to hamper and defeat the policy of the government.
In short, republicanism began to rise in an ominous and threatening way;
and at the head of republicanism in Paris stood forth Gambetta, with his
impassioned eloquence, his stinging phrases, and his youthful boldness. He
became the idol of that part of Paris known as Belleville, where artisans and
laborers united with the rabble of the streets in hating the empire and in
crying out for a republic.
Gambetta was precisely the man to voice the feelings of these people.
Whatever polish he acquired in after years was then quite lacking; and the
crudity of his manners actually helped him with the men whom he
harangued. A recent book by M. Francis Laur, an ardent admirer of
Gambetta, gives a picture of the man which may be nearly true of him in his
later life, but which is certainly too flattering when applied to Gambetta in
1868, at the age of thirty.
How do we see Gambetta as he was at thirty? A man of powerful frame
and of intense vitality, with thick, clustering hair, which he shook as a lion
shakes its mane; olive-skinned, with eyes that darted fire, a resonant,
sonorous voice, and a personal magnetism which was instantly felt by all
who met him or who heard him speak. His manners were not refined. He
was fond of oil and garlic. His gestures were often more frantic than
impressive, so that his enemies called him "the furious fool." He had a trick
of spitting while he spoke. He was by no means the sort of man whose
habits had been formed in drawing-rooms or among people of good
breeding. Yet his oratory was, of its kind, superb.
In 1869 Gambetta was elected by the Red Republicans to the Corps
Legislatif. From the very first his vehemence and fire gained him a ready
hearing. The chamber itself was arranged like a great theater, the members

occupying the floor and the public the galleries. Each orator in addressing
the house mounted a sort of rostrum and from it faced the whole
assemblage, not noticing, as with us, the presiding officer at all. The very
nature of this arrangement stimulated parliamentary speaking into
eloquence and flamboyant oratory.
After Gambetta had spoken a few times he noticed in the gallery a tall,
graceful woman, dressed in some neutral color and wearing long black
gloves, which accentuated the beauty of her hands and arms. No one in the
whole assembly paid such close attention to the orator as did this woman,
whom he had never seen before and who appeared to be entirely alone.
When it came to him to speak on another day he saw sitting in the same
place the same stately and yet lithe and sinuous figure. This was repeated
again and again, until at last whenever he came to a peculiarly fervid burst
of oratory he turned to this woman's face and saw it lighted up by the same
enthusiasm which was stirring him.
Finally, in the early part of 1870, there came a day when Gambetta
surpassed himself in eloquence. His theme was the grandeur of republican
government. Never in his life had he spoken so boldly as then, or with such
fervor. The ministers of the emperor shrank back in dismay as this big-
voiced, strong-limbed man hurled forth sentence after sentence like
successive peals of irresistible artillery.
As Gambetta rolled forth his sentences, superb in their rhetoric and all
ablaze with that sort of intense feeling which masters an orator in the
moment of his triumph, the face of the lady in the gallery responded to him
with wonderful appreciation. She was no longer calm, unmoved, and almost
severe. She flushed, and her eyes as they met his seemed to sparkle with
living fire. When he finished and descended from the rostrum he looked at
her, and their eyes cried out as significantly as if the two had spoken to each
other.
Then Gambetta did what a person of finer breeding would not have done.
He hastily scribbled a note, sealed it, and called to his side one of the
official pages. In the presence of the great assemblage, where he was for the
moment the center of attention, he pointed to the lady in the gallery and
ordered the page to take the note to her.
One may excuse this only on the ground that he was completely carried
away by his emotion, so that to him there was no one present save this

enigmatically fascinating woman and himself. But the lady on her side was
wiser; or perhaps a slight delay gave her time to recover her discretion.
When Gambetta's note was brought to her she took it quietly and tore it into
little pieces without reading it; and then, rising, she glided through the
crowd and disappeared.
Gambetta in his excitement had acted as if she were a mere adventuress.
With perfect dignity she had shown him that she was a woman who retained
her self-respect.
Immediately upon the heels of this curious incident came the outbreak of
the war with Germany. In the war the empire was shattered at Sedan. The
republic was proclaimed in Paris. The French capital was besieged by a vast
German army. Gambetta was made minister of the interior, and remained
for a while in Paris even after it had been blockaded. But his fiery spirit
chafed under such conditions. He longed to go forth into the south of
France and arouse his countrymen with a cry to arms against the invaders.
Escaping in a balloon, he safely reached the city of Tours; and there he
established what was practically a dictatorship. He flung himself with
tremendous energy into the task of organizing armies, of equipping them,
and of directing their movements for the relief of Paris. He did, in fact,
accomplish wonders. He kept the spirit of the nation still alive. Three new
armies were launched against the Germans. Gambetta was everywhere and
took part in everything that was done. His inexperience in military affairs,
coupled with his impatience of advice, led him to make serious mistakes.
Nevertheless, one of his armies practically defeated the Germans at
Orleans; and could he have had his own way, even the fall of Paris would
not have ended the war.
"Never," said Gambetta, "shall I consent to peace so long as France still
has two hundred thousand men under arms and more than a thousand
cannon to direct against the enemy!"
But he was overruled by other and less fiery statesmen. Peace was made,
and Gambetta retired for a moment into private life. If he had not succeeded
in expelling the German hosts he had, at any rate, made Bismarck hate him,
and he had saved the honor of France.
It was while the National Assembly at Versailles was debating the terms
of peace with Germany that Gambetta once more delivered a noble and
patriotic speech. As he concluded he felt a strange magnetic attraction; and,

sweeping the audience with a glance, he saw before him, not very far away,
the same woman with the long black gloves, having about her still an air of
mystery, but again meeting his eyes with her own, suffused with feeling.
Gambetta hurried to an anteroom and hastily scribbled the following
note:
At last I see you once more. Is it really you?
The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she
received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice
of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without making a reply.
It was an encouragement, yet it gave no opening to Gambetta—for she
returned to the National Assembly no more. But now his heart was full of
hope, for he was convinced with a very deep conviction that somewhere,
soon, and in some way he would meet this woman, who had become to him
one of the intense realities of his life. He did not know her name. They had
never exchanged a word. Yet he was sure that time would bring them close
together.
His intuition was unerring. What we call chance often seems to know
what it is doing. Within a year after the occurrence that has just been
narrated an old friend of Gambetta's met with an accident which confined
him to his house. The statesman strolled to his friend's residence. The
accident was a trifling one, and the mistress of the house was holding a sort
of informal reception, answering questions that were asked her by the
numerous acquaintances who called.
As Gambetta was speaking, of a sudden he saw before him, at the
extremity of the room, the lady of his dreams, the sphinx of his waking
hours, the woman who four years earlier had torn up the note which he
addressed to her, but who more recently had kept his written words. Both of
them were deeply agitated, yet both of them carried off the situation without
betraying themselves to others, Gambetta approached, and they exchanged
a few casual commonplaces. But now, close together, eye and voice spoke
of what was in their hearts.
Presently the lady took her leave. Gambetta followed closely. In the street
he turned to her and said in pleading tones:
"Why did you destroy my letter? You knew I loved you, and yet all these
years you have kept away from me in silence."

Then the girl—for she was little more than a girl—hesitated for a
moment. As he looked upon her face he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
At last she spoke with emotion:
"You cannot love me, for I am unworthy of you. Do not urge me. Do not
make promises. Let us say good-by. At least I must first tell you of my
story, for I am one of those women whom no one ever marries."
Gambetta brushed aside her pleadings. He begged that he might see her
soon. Little by little she consented; but she would not see him at her house.
She knew that his enemies were many and that everything he did would be
used against him. In the end she agreed to meet him in the park at
Versailles, near the Petit Trianon, at eight o'clock in the morning.
When she had made this promise he left her. Already a new inspiration
had come to him, and he felt that with this woman by his side he could
accomplish anything.
At the appointed hour, in the silence of the park and amid the sunshine of
the beautiful morning, the two met once again. Gambetta seized her hands
with eagerness and cried out in an exultant tone:
"At last! At last! At last!"
But the woman's eyes were heavy with sorrow, and upon her face there
was a settled melancholy. She trembled at his touch and almost shrank from
him. Here was seen the impetuosity of the meridional. He had first spoken
to this woman only two days before. He knew nothing of her station, of her
surroundings, of her character. He did not even know her name. Yet one
thing he knew absolutely—that she was made for him and that he must have
her for his own. He spoke at once of marriage; but at this she drew away
from him still farther.
"No," she said. "I told you that you must not speak to me until you have
heard my story."
He led her to a great stone bench near by; and, passing his arm about her
waist, he drew her head down to his shoulder as he said:
"Well, tell me. I will listen."
Then this girl of twenty-four, with perfect frankness, because she was
absolutely loyal, told him why she felt that they must never see each other
any more-much less marry and be happy. She was the daughter of a colonel
in the French army. The sudden death of her father had left her penniless

and alone. Coming to Paris at the age of eighteen, she had given lessons in
the household of a high officer of the empire. This man had been attracted
by her beauty, and had seduced her.
Later she had secured the means of living modestly, realizing more
deeply each month how dreadful had been her fate and how she had been
cut off from the lot of other girls. She felt that her life must be a perpetual
penance for what had befallen her through her ignorance and inexperience.
She told Gambetta that her name was Leonie Leon. As is the custom of
Frenchwomen who live alone, she styled herself madame. It is doubtful
whether the name by which she passed was that which had been given to
her at baptism; but, if so, her true name has never been disclosed.
When she had told the whole of her sad story to Gambetta he made
nothing of it. She said to him again:
"You cannot love me. I should only dim your fame. You can have nothing
in common with a dishonored, ruined girl. That is what I came here to
explain to you. Let us part, and let us for all time forget each other."
But Gambetta took no heed of what she said. Now that he had found her,
he would not consent to lose her. He seized her slender hands and covered
them with kisses. Again he urged that she should marry him.
Her answer was a curious one. She was a devoted Catholic and would not
regard any marriage as valid save a religious marriage. On the other hand,
Gambetta, though not absolutely irreligious, was leading the opposition to
the Catholic party in France. The Church to him was not so much a
religious body as a political one, and to it he was unalterably opposed.
Personally, he would have no objections to being married by a priest; but as
a leader of the anti-clerical party he felt that he must not recognize the
Church's claim in any way. A religious marriage would destroy his
influence with his followers and might even imperil the future of the
republic.
They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward. He urged a
civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the rites
of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her self-respect.
In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge upon Gambetta that
he should destroy his influence by marrying her in church.
Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the two
grew every moment more hopelessly in love. Then the woman, with a

woman's curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular
conclusion. She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil
marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate. On the other
hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going
through a religious ceremony. She had heard from a priest that the Church
recognized two forms of betrothal. The usual one looked to a marriage in
the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the formal ceremony.
But there was another kind of betrothal known to the theologians as
sponsalia de praesente. According to this, if there were an actual betrothal,
the pair might have the privileges and rights of marriage immediately, if
only they sincerely meant to be married in the future.
The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law
and used it with great ingenuity.
"Let us," she said, "be formally betrothed by the interchange of a ring,
and let us promise each other to marry in the future. After such a betrothal
as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be acting according to
the laws of the Church."
Gambetta gladly gave his promise. A betrothal ring was purchased; and
then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her
lover. Gambetta was sincere. He said to her:
"If the time should ever come when I shall lose my political station, when
I am beaten in the struggle, when I am deserted and alone, will you not then
marry me when I ask you?"
And Leonie, with her arms about his neck, promised that she would. Yet
neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did it
seem at the moment as if the question could arise.
For Gambetta was very powerful. He led his party to success in the
election of 1877. Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the
National Assembly of France. In 1879 he was chosen to be president of the
Chamber of Deputies. He towered far above the president of the republic—
Jules Grevy, that hard-headed, close-fisted old peasant—and his star had
reached its zenith.
All this time he and Leonie Leon maintained their intimacy, though it
was carefully concealed save from a very few. She lived in a plain but
pretty house on the Avenue Perrichont in the quiet quarter of Auteuil; but
Gambetta never came there. Where and when they met was a secret guarded

very carefully by the few who were his close associates. But meet they did
continually, and their affection grew stronger every year. Leonie thrilled at
the victories of the man she loved; and he found joy in the hours that he
spent with her.
Gambetta's need of rest was very great, for he worked at the highest
tension, like an engine which is using every pound of steam. Bismarck,
whose spies kept him well informed of everything that was happening in
Paris, and who had no liking for Gambetta, since the latter always spoke of
him as "the Ogre," once said to a Frenchman named Cheberry:
"He is the only one among you who thinks of revenge, and who is any
sort of a menace to Germany. But, fortunately, he won't last much longer. I
am not speaking thoughtlessly. I know from secret reports what sort of a life
your great man leads, and I know his habits. Why, his life is a life of
continual overwork. He rests neither night nor day. All politicians who have
led the same life have died young. To be able to serve one's country for a
long time a statesman must marry an ugly woman, have children like the
rest of the world, and a country place or a house to one's self like any
common peasant, where he can go and rest."
The Iron Chancellor chuckled as he said this, and he was right. And yet
Gambetta's end came not so much through overwork as by an accident.
It may be that the ambition of Mme. Leon stimulated him beyond his
powers. However this may be, early in 1882, when he was defeated in
Parliament on a question which he considered vital, he immediately
resigned and turned his back on public life. His fickle friends soon deserted
him. His enemies jeered and hooted the mention of his name.
He had reached the time which with a sort of prophetic instinct he had
foreseen nearly ten years before. So he turned to the woman who had been
faithful and loving to him; and he turned to her with a feeling of infinite
peace.
"You promised me," he said, "that if ever I was defeated and alone you
would marry me. The time is now."
Then this man, who had exercised the powers of a dictator, who had
levied armies and shaken governments, and through whose hands there had
passed thousands of millions of francs, sought for a country home. He
found for sale a small estate which had once belonged to Balzac, and which
is known as Les Jardies. It was in wretched repair; yet the small sum which

it cost Gambetta—twelve thousand francs—was practically all that he
possessed. Worn and weary as he was, it seemed to him a haven of
delightful peace; for here he might live in the quiet country with the still
beautiful woman who was soon to become his wife.
It is not known what form of marriage they at last agreed upon. She may
have consented to a civil ceremony; or he, being now out of public life, may
have felt that he could be married by the Church. The day for their wedding
had been set, and Gambetta was already at Les Jardies. But there came a
rumor that he had been shot. Still further tidings bore the news that he was
dying. Paris, fond as it was of scandals, immediately spread the tale that he
had been shot by a jealous woman.
The truth is quite the contrary. Gambetta, in arranging his effects in his
new home, took it upon himself to clean a pair of dueling-pistols; for every
French politician of importance must fight duels, and Gambetta had already
done so. Unfortunately, one cartridge remained unnoticed in the pistol
which Gambetta cleaned. As he held the pistol-barrel against the soft part of
his hand the cartridge exploded, and the ball passed through the base of the
thumb with a rending, spluttering noise.
The wound was not in itself serious, but now the prophecy of Bismarck
was fulfilled. Gambetta had exhausted his vitality; a fever set in, and before
long he died of internal ulceration.
This was the end of a great career and of a great romance of love. Leonie
Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was so soon to be her
husband. She wandered for hours in the forest until she reached a convent,
where she was received. Afterward she came to Paris and hid herself away
in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life had gone out. She wished
that she had died with him whose glory had been her life. Friends of
Gambetta, however, discovered her and cared for her until her death, long
afterward, in 1906.
She lived upon the memories of the past, of the swift love that had come
at first sight, but which had lasted unbrokenly; which had given her the
pride of conquest, and which had brought her lover both happiness and
inspiration and a refining touch which had smoothed away his roughness
and made him fit to stand in palaces with dignity and distinction.
As for him, he left a few lines which have been carefully preserved, and
which sum up his thought of her. They read:

To the light of my soul; to the star, of my life—Leonie Leon. For ever!
For ever!

LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY
Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts or by his
impudence or by the combination of both, has made himself a recognized
leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of these men was
Richard Nash, usually known as "Beau Nash," who flourished in the
eighteenth century. Nash was a man of doubtful origin; nor was he
attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy creature with features that
were both irregular and harsh. Nevertheless, for nearly fifty years Beau
Nash was an arbiter of fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote his life, declared that
his supremacy was due to his pleasing manners, "his assiduity, flattery, fine
clothes, and as much wit as the ladies had whom he addressed." He
converted the town of Bath from a rude little hamlet into an English
Newport, of which he was the social autocrat. He actually drew up a set of
written rules which some of the best-born and best-bred people follow
slavishly.
Even better known to us is George Bryan Brummel, commonly called
"Beau Brummel," who by his friendship with George IV.—then Prince
Regent—was an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and
etiquette and the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive
most of all by Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The play
is based upon the actual facts; for after Brummel had lost the royal favor he
died an insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He, too, had a
distinguished biographer, since Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham is really the
narrative of Brummel's curious career.
Long after Brummel, Lord Banelagh led the gilded youth of London, and
it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montez made her first appearance
in the British capital.
These three men—Nash, Brummel, and Ranelagh—had the advantage of
being Englishmen, and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English
suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a
Frenchman who for twenty years during the early part of Queen Victoria's
reign gave law to the great world of fashion, besides exercising a definite
influence upon English art and literature.

This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's
generals, and descended by a morganatic marriage from the King of
Wurttemburg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage,
impressive appearance, and keen intellect, all of which qualities he
transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age,
found the Napoleonic era ended and France governed by Louis XVIII. The
king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment stationed
at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already visited
England and learned the English language, and he had made some
distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas
Moore.
On his return to France he began his garrison life at Valence, where he
showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely that he
was handsome and accomplished and that he had the gift of winning the
affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel, he was a
gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest kind. At the
balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted than any other
officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and showed them the most
flattering attentions. No "wallflowers" were left neglected when D'Orsay
was present.
It is strange how completely human beings are in the hands of fate. Here
was a young French officer quartered in a provincial town in the valley of
the Rhone. Who would have supposed that he was destined to become not
only a Londoner, but a favorite at the British court, a model of fashion, a
dictator of etiquette, widely known for his accomplishments, the patron of
literary men and of distinguished artists? But all these things were to come
to pass by a mere accident of fortune.
During his firsts visit to London, which has already been mentioned,
Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl and
Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this was only
an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds any further it
is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady Blessington, since
both of their careers had been, to say the least, unusual.
Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been
revived. He was remotely descended from the Stuarts of Scotland, and
therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and in

many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had early
inherited a very large property which yielded him an income of about thirty
thousand pounds a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he owned nearly the
whole of a fashionable street in London, with the buildings erected on it.
This fortune and the absence of any one who could control him had made
him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of
personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the most
gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his love of
display became almost a monomania. He built a theater as an adjunct to his
country house in Ireland and imported players from London and elsewhere
to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers, to try on their various
costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an oriental prince and now as
a Roman emperor.
In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure
wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the stage
that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on a girl named
Mary Campbell Browne, who was very beautiful to look at, but who was
not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When Lord
Blessington proposed marriage to her she was obliged to tell him that she
already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly willing to live
with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So for several years she
did live with him and bore him two children.
It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband died a
marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a countess. Then,
after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the earl a widower
at about the age of forty. The only legitimate son born of this marriage
followed his mother to the grave; and so for the third time the earldom of
Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death of his wife,
however, gave the earl a special opportunity to display his extravagant
tastes. He spent more than four thousand pounds on the funeral ceremonies,
importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque which had shortly
before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's marshal, Duroc, while
the house blazed with enormous wax tapers and glittered with cloth of gold.
Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London.
Having now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he
borrowed large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and houses

and to experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At this time he had
his lands in Ireland, a town house in St. James's Square, another in Seymour
Place, and still another which was afterward to become famous as Gore
House, in Kensington.
Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice
Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story of
her still young life must here be told, because her name afterward became
famous, and because the tale illustrates wonderfully well the raw, crude,
lawless period of the Regency, when England was fighting her long war
with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all the vices of the
old French kings, when prize-fighting, deep drinking, dueling, and dicing
were practised without restraint in all the large cities and towns of the
United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has said, "an age of
folly and of heroism"; for, while it produced some of the greatest black-
guards known to history, it produced also such men as Wellington and
Nelson, the two Pitts, Sheridan, Byron, Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.
Mrs. Maurice Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named
Robert Power—himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time. There
was little law in Ireland, not even that which comes from public opinion;
and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly, and assembled
in his house all sorts of reprobates, with whom he held frightful orgies that
lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his young daughters viewed
him with terror, and the life they led was a perpetual nightmare because of
the bestial carousings in which their father engaged, wasting his money and
mortgaging his estates until the end of his wild career was in plain sight.
There happened to be stationed at Clonmel a regiment of infantry in
which there served a captain named Maurice St. Leger Farmer. He was a
man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly
uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with him, and
he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball in Clonmel he
met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child of fourteen
years. Captain Farmer was seized with an infatuation for the girl, and he
went almost at once to her father, asking for her hand in marriage and
proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she married him.
The hard-riding squireen jumped at the offer. His own estate was being
stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters, or,

rather, to get rid of her, and he agreed that she should be married out of
hand. Going home, he roughly informed the girl that she was to be the wife
of Captain Farmer. He so bullied his wife that she was compelled to join
him in this command.
What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She
knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she
would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were
tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death; yet for her there
was no help. Therefore, while not yet fifteen her marriage took place, and
she was the unhappy slave of a half-crazy tyrant. She had then no beauty
whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped—thin and pale, and with rough
hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer wanted her, and he settled
his money on her, just as he would have spent the same amount to gratify
any other sudden whim.
The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of a
devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her, in subjecting
her to every sort of outrage; nor did he refrain even from beating her with
his fists. The girl could stand a great deal, but this was too much. She
returned to her father's house, where she was received with the bitterest
reproaches, but where, at least, she was safe from harm, since her
possession of a dowry made her a person of some small importance.
Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his colonel,
Lord Caledon, and in the course of it he drew his sword on his commanding
officer. The court-martial which was convened to try him would probably
have had him shot were it not for the very general belief that he was insane.
So he was simply cashiered and obliged to leave the service and betake
himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom, he had married was quite free—free
to leave her wretched home and even to leave Ireland.
She did leave Ireland and establish herself in London, where she had
some acquaintances, among them the Earl of Blessington. As already said,
he had met her in Ireland while she was living with her husband; and now
from time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death of his wife
he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good deal alone, and
his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past experience led her to have
no real belief in love. She had become, however, in a small way interested
in literature and art, with an eager ambition to be known as a writer. As it

happened, Captain Farmer, whose name she bore, had died some months
before Lord Blessington had decided to make a new marriage. The earl
proposed to Margaret Farmer, and the two were married by special license.
The Countess of Blessington—to give the lady her new title—was now
twenty-eight years of age and had developed into a woman of great beauty.
She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant expression which
was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid loveliness accompanied by
grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite proportions. The ugly duckling
had become a swan, for now there was no trace of her former plainness to
be seen.
Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been thrust
upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband was much
older than she; and, though she was not without a certain kindly feeling for
one who had been kind to her, she married him, first of all, for his title and
position.
Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess
was even more so. One after another their London houses were opened and
decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable
entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank, but—because
this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad—to artists and actors and writers
of all degrees. The American, N. P. Willis, in his Pencilings by the Way, has
given an interesting sketch of the countess and her surroundings, while the
younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has depicted D'Orsay as Count
Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as the
door opened, was a very lovely one—a woman of remarkable beauty, half
buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp
suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches, ottomans,
and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room;
enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner,
and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book, to which the eye
was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.

All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such as
Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain
this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money, totaling
about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his different estates and
giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of course, he did not spend
this vast sum immediately. He might have lived in comparative luxury upon
his income; but he was a restless, eager, improvident nobleman, and his
extravagances were prompted by the urgings of his wife.
In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the
thirties—a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional life,
if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved in return.
During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in many ways, and
it is probable that no thought of love had entered her mind. She was only
too glad if she could escape from the harshness of her father and the cruelty
of her first husband. Then came her development into a beautiful woman,
content for the time to be languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and
peace which had come to her.
When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet
commenced; and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage—a
marriage with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and
having no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social
triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit them in
her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish hand. But,
after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things could satisfy
her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity, imaginative and eager,
such a nature as hers would in the end be starved unless her heart should be
deeply touched and unless all her pent-up emotion could give itself up
entirely in the great surrender.
After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more
than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no less

restless; and so, without knowing the reason—which, indeed, she herself
did not understand—he readily assented to a journey on the Continent.
As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to the
heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight of his
face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing had ever
stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to have been
conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough that they were
soothed and satisfied with each other's company.
Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and to
accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the three
passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse among
the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just what passed
between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time cannot be
known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it is certain that
before very long they came to know that each was indispensable to the
other.
The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet Gardiner,
his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed the match upon
the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum of forty thousand
pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen years of age. She had
no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and, in addition, D'Orsay was
now deeply in love with her stepmother.
On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way of "YOUR
D'Orsay." The manners and morals of the time were decidedly irregular; yet
sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of what every one was
saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet in order to shelter his
relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed to the marriage with Lady
Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.

This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to
be not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage. The
unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the indiscretions of
her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the whole family,
returning to London, made their home together in Seymour Place.
Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years
Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he would
now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was bound
fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no divorce court in
England, and since he had no reason for seeking a divorce, he was obliged
to live on through many years in a most ambiguous situation. He did,
however, separate himself from his childish bride; and, having done so, he
openly took up his residence with Lady Blessington at Gore House. By this
time, however, the companionship of the two had received a sort of general
sanction, and in that easy-going age most people took it as a matter of
course.
The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore House,
and there they received all the notable men of the time. The improvidence
of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished. She lived
upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as interest, and
gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic works, from jewels and
curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful statuary.
D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and
he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of
Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had been
made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore House,
and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington herself
engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were very popular
in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only one book which is
of permanent value—her Conversations with Lord Byron, a very valuable
contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.

But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it was all gone,
yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up mountain-high. She
signed notes of hand without even reading them. She incurred obligations
of every sort without a moment's hesitation.
For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her resources
were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash as sudden as it
was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to whom she owed
money took out judgments against her and descended upon Gore House in a
swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady Blessington was in her
sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.
It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the wreck
of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore House Mr.
Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:
Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers, lace-
venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having claims to
urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution for a debt of
four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house largely engaged in the
silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry business.
This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it
opened the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden
writes still further:
On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.
Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the
conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The arm-chair
in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied by a stout,
coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged in examining a
marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which were modeled from a
cast of those of the absent mistress of the establishment. People, as they
passed through the room, poked the furniture, pulled about the precious
objects of art and ornaments of various kinds that lay on the table; and some
made jests and ribald jokes on the scene they witnessed.
At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value. Pictures
by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands of volumes,

vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and precious
porcelains—all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical prices. Lady
Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that the hour had struck,
and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither Count d'Orsay had
already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a boot-maker to whom
he owed five hundred pounds.
D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had always
been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had been
chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's long
period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had helped him
both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected some return for
his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In 1852, shortly after
Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count was appointed director
of fine arts; but when the news was brought to him he was already dying.
Lady Blessington died soon after coming to Paris, before the end of the year
1849.
Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her "Night
Book." They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only for a
little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned herself.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.
The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of two
hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory still
recalls what they once were to each other.
People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.
A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than to be
pardoned for it.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.

BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more
talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his
brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold."
Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a
personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.
Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of revolt,
and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His father was a
gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a degree. Byron
himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly sensitive because
of a physical deformity—a lame, misshapen foot. This and the strange
treatment which his mother accorded him left him headstrong, wilful,
almost from the first an enemy to whatever was established and
conventional.
As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he
formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl
named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a
strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest crises of his
life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose grand-father had
been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as he was, he would
have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was two years older than
he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the devotion of a school-boy.
Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at
Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled
eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty little
poem to the "maid of Athens"—Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of the British
vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the most admired
poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was possessed of striking
personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him: "His countenance was a thing
to dream of." His glorious eyes, his mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all;
and he was, besides, a genius of the first rank.

With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying
himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and
unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East made
many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such as "The
Giaour" and "The Corsair." A German wrote of him that "he was positively
besieged by women." From the humblest maid-servants up to ladies of high
rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make a conquest. Some
women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be thrown. No wonder that
he was sated with so much adoration and that he wrote of women:
I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as
grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave of
one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she will
be content.
The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that
between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed
for his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady
Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward
Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen
Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too
much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was a
sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new excitement.
She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which her friends politely
admired, and from which they escaped as soon as possible. When she first
met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my fate!" And she afterward
added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know!"
It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point of
open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,
older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough, it was not
very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic impetuosity
became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always of herself,
thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish when he
would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she fretful
when their mutual egotisms jarred."
In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was
worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made her
way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she thought

he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of scissors. Still
later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill him. Byron himself
wrote of her:
You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said
and done.
Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The
Marriage of William Ashe."
Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation. At
any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke, who at
first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were married. Byron
seems to have had a premonition that he was making a terrible mistake.
During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf, and made the wrong
responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was over, in handing his
bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said to her:
"Miss Millbanke, are you ready?"
It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded
at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could have
been more thoroughly mismated—Byron, the human volcano, and his wife,
a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility was
evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from their
wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he
answered:
"Call it rather a treacle moon!"
It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic troubles.
Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted. Lady Byron
declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many times to win
from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up the task in a sort
of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for the benefit of those
who recall the hideous charges made many decades afterward by Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron, that the latter
remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta Leigh, Lord Byron's
sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an amicable message to Mrs.
Leigh.
Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him, left
England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland, he took

up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding himself of
the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he expressed in these
lines:

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!

Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in
upon him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold"
and "Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth
canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars. In
Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but
eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a new
phase of his curious career.
He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much
brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look was
no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change had not
been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild impetuosity,
and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth year, in fact, he had at
last become a man.
It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for the
rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the stormy
horizon of the poet." This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, whom he
first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years of age, and
she was married to a man who was more than forty years her senior. Unlike
the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy eyes and an
abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest and graceful.
She had known Byron but a very short time when she found herself thrilling
with a passion of which until then she had never dreamed. It was written of
her:
She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its
slave.
To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until
his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.
Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.
Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with
Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met frequently.

When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the countess remained
beside him, and he was just recovering when Count Guiccioli appeared
upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in despair. He
exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he dreaded
assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband. Whenever
he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.
Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was remarkable.
He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he hoped for the
day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united once for all.
This came about in the end through the persistence of the pair. The
Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to be separated
until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in their struggle for
independence. This was in 1822, when Byron was in his thirty-fifth year.
He never returned to Italy, but died in the historic land for which he gave
his life as truly as if he had fallen upon the field of battle.
Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just three years.
Much, has been said in condemnation of this love-affair; but in many ways
it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. It was an instance of
genuine love, a love which purified and exalted this man of dark and moody
moments. It saved him from those fitful passions and orgies of self-
indulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to be an inspiration which
at last led him to die for a cause approved by all the world.
As for the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted
by the world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected.
A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. The
countess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, and riches,
for the love of the poet who had won her heart."
Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish in her
devotion. She thought more of his fame than did he himself. Emilio
Castelar has written:
She restored him and elevated him. She drew him from the mire and set
the crown of purity upon his brow. Then, when she had recovered this great
heart, instead of keeping it as her own possession, she gave it to humanity.
For twenty-seven years after Byron's death, she remained, as it were,
widowed and alone. Then, in her old age, she married the Marquis de
Boissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart was

always Byron's, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1868, she published
her memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affecting recollections.
She died as late as 1873.
Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said to
have visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron's home. She was
very old, a widow, and alone; but her affection for the poet-lover of her
youth was still as strong as ever.
Byron's life was short, if measured by years only. Measured by
achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like a meteor in
the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor gleams about the
lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly and made him
worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of himself.

THE STORY OF MME. DE STAEL
Each century, or sometimes each generation, is distinguished by some
especial interest among those who are given to fancies—not to call them
fads. Thus, at the present time, the cultivated few are taken up with what
they choose to term the "new thought," or the "new criticism," or, on the
other hand, with socialistic theories and projects. Thirty years ago, when
Oscar Wilde was regarded seriously by some people, there were many who
made a cult of estheticism. It was just as interesting when their leader—

Walked down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
In his medieval hand,

or when Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan guyed him as
Bunthorne in "Patience."
When Charles Kingsley was a great expounder of British common sense,
"muscular Christianity" was a phrase which was taken up by many
followers. A little earlier, Puseyism and a primitive form of socialism were
in vogue with the intellectuals. There are just as many different fashions in
thought as in garments, and they come and go without any particular
reason. To-day, they are discussed and practised everywhere. To-morrow,
they are almost forgotten in the rapid pursuit of something new.
Forty years before the French Revolution burst forth with all its
thunderings, France and Germany were affected by what was generally
styled "sensibility." Sensibility was the sister of sentimentality and the half-
sister of sentiment. Sentiment is a fine thing in itself. It is consistent with
strength and humor and manliness; but sentimentality and sensibility are
poor cheeping creatures that run scuttering along the ground, quivering and
whimpering and asking for perpetual sympathy, which they do not at all
deserve.
No one need be ashamed of sentiment. It simply gives temper to the
blade, and mellowness to the intellect. Sensibility, on the other hand, is full
of shivers and shakes and falsetto notes and squeaks. It is, in fact, all
humbug, just as sentiment is often all truth.

Therefore, to find an interesting phase of human folly, we may look back
to the years which lie between 1756 and 1793 as the era of sensibility. The
great prophets of this false god, or goddess, were Rousseau in France and
Goethe with Schiller in Germany, together with a host of midgets who
shook and shivered in imitation of their masters. It is not for us to catalogue
these persons. Some of them were great figures in literature and philosophy,
and strong enough to shake aside the silliness of sensibility; but others,
while they professed to be great as writers or philosophers, are now
remembered only because their devotion to sensibility made them
conspicuous in their own time. They dabbled in one thing and another; they
"cribbed" from every popular writer of the day. The only thing that actually
belonged to them was a high degree of sensibility.
And what, one may ask, was this precious thing—this sensibility?
It was really a sort of St. Vitus's dance of the mind, and almost of the
body. When two persons, in any way interested in each other, were brought
into the same room, one of them appeared to be seized with a rotary
movement. The voice rose to a higher pitch than usual, and assumed a
tremolo. Then, if the other person was also endowed with sensibility, he or
she would rotate and quake in somewhat the same manner. Their cups of tea
would be considerably agitated. They would move about in as unnatural a
manner as possible; and when they left the room, they would do so with
gaspings and much waste of breath.
This was not an exhibition of love—or, at least, not necessarily so. You
might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant soldier, or a
celebrated traveler—or, for that matter, before a remarkable buffoon, like
Cagliostro, or a freak, like Kaspar Hauser.
It is plain enough that sensibility was entirely an abnormal thing, and
denoted an abnormal state of mind. Only among people like the Germans
and French of that period, who were forbidden to take part in public affairs,
could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such rank and fetid
outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of Goethe, and the loose
morality of the French royalists, which rushed on into the roaring sea of
infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of the Revolution.
Of all the historic figures of that time, there is just one which to-day
stands forth as representing sensibility. In her own time she was thought to
be something of a philosopher, and something more of a novelist. She

consorted with all the clever men and women of her age. But now she holds
a minute niche in history because of the fact that Napoleon stooped to hate
her, and because she personifies sensibility.
Criticism has stripped from her the rags and tatters of the philosophy
which was not her own. It is seen that she was indebted to the brains of
others for such imaginative bits of fiction as she put forth in Delphine and
Corinne; but as the exponent of sensibility she remains unique. This woman
was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, usually known as Mme. de Stael.
There was much about Mile. Necker's parentage that made her
interesting. Her father was the Genevese banker and minister of Louis XVI,
who failed wretchedly in his attempts to save the finances of France. Her
mother, Suzanne Curchod, as a young girl, had won the love of the famous
English historian, Edward Gibbon. She had first refused him, and then
almost frantically tried to get him back; but by this time Gibbon was more
comfortable in single life and less infatuated with Mlle. Curchod, who
presently married Jacques Necker.
M. Necker's money made his daughter a very celebrated "catch." Her
mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond
description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the
Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the
court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the
leadership of the giddy Marie Antoinette.
It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant forms
of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time—Voltaire, Rousseau,
Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the most
accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in the
natural and political sciences. Thus, when her father was drawing up his
monograph on the French finances, Germaine labored hard over a
supplementary report, studying documents, records, and the most
complicated statistics, so that she might obtain a mastery of the subject.
"I mean to know everything that anybody knows," she said, with an
arrogance which was rather admired in so young a woman.
But, unfortunately, her mind was not great enough to fulfil her aspiration.
The most she ever achieved was a fair knowledge of many things—a
knowledge which seemed surprising to the average man, but which was
superficial enough to the accomplished specialist.

In her twentieth year (1786) it was thought best that she should marry.
Her revels, as well as her hard studies, had told upon her health, and her
mother believed that she could not be at once a blue-stocking and a woman
of the world.
There was something very odd about the relation that existed between the
young girl and this mother of hers. In the Swiss province where they had
both been born, the mother had been considered rather bold and forward.
Her penchant for Gibbon was only one of a number of adventures that have
been told about her. She was by no means coy with the gallants of Geneva.
Yet, after her marriage, and when she came to Paris, she seemed to be
transformed into a sort of Swiss Puritan.
As such, she undertook her daughter's bringing up, and was extremely
careful about everything that Germaine did and about the company she
kept. On the other hand, the daughter, who in the city of Calvin had been
rather dull and quiet in her ways, launched out into a gaiety such as she had
never known in Switzerland. Mother and daughter, in fact, changed parts.
The country beauty of Geneva became the prude of Paris, while the quiet,
unemotional young Genevese became the light of all the Parisian salons,
whether social or intellectual.
The mother was a very beautiful woman. The daughter, who was to
become so famous, is best described by those two very uncomplimentary
English words, "dumpy" and "frumpy." She had bulging eyes—which are
not emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard—and her hair was
unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine
bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm of person.
It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's cleverness, even
though that cleverness was little more, in the end, than the borrowing of
brilliant things from other persons. At any rate, the two never cared for each
other, and Germaine gave to her father the affection which her mother
neither received nor sought.
It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was
arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then
represented the court of Sweden at Paris. Many eyebrows were lifted when
this match was announced. Baron de Stael had no personal charm, nor any
reputation for wit. His standing in the diplomatic corps was not very high.
His favorite occupations were playing cards and drinking enormous

quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely
clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who was
herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss political
economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic love?
Many differed about this. Mlle. Necker was, to be sure, rich and clever;
but the Baron de Stael was of an old family, and had a title. Moreover, his
easy-going ways—even his punch-drinking and his card-playing—made
him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the
aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license, and
when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet
ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous. For Paris was
now approaching the time of revolution, and all "aristocrats" were more or
less in danger.
At first Mme. de Stael rather sympathized with the outbreak of the
people; but later their excesses drove her back into sympathy with the
royalists. It was then that she became indiscreet and abused the privilege of
the embassy in giving shelter to her friends. She was obliged to make a
sudden flight across the frontier, whence she did not return until Napoleon
loomed up, a political giant on the horizon—victorious general, consul, and
emperor.
Mme. de Stael's relations with Napoleon have, as I remarked above, been
among her few titles to serious remembrance. The Corsican eagle and the
dumpy little Genevese make, indeed, a peculiar pair; and for this reason
writers have enhanced the oddities of the picture.
"Napoleon," says one, "did not wish any one to be near him who was as
clever as himself."
"No," adds another, "Mme. de Stael made a dead set at Napoleon,
because she wished to conquer and achieve the admiration of everybody,
even of the greatest man who ever lived."
"Napoleon found her to be a good deal of a nuisance," observes a third.
"She knew too much, and was always trying to force her knowledge upon
others."
The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty to
be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction that the
conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little woman. It is,
perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to decide whether Napoleon

was really of so petty a nature as to feel himself inferior to this rather comic
creature, even though at the time many people thought her a remarkable
genius.
In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know him
through the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others, we
can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would sit at
dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole ceremony into
twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee, and
then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to talk about the
ethics of history, or the possibility of a new form of government. Napoleon,
himself, was making history, and writing it in fire and flame; and as for
governments, he invented governments all over Europe as suited his
imperial will. What patience could he have with one whom an English
writer has rather unkindly described as "an ugly coquette, an old woman
who made a ridiculous marriage, a blue-stocking, who spent much of her
time in pestering men of genius, and drawing from them sarcastic comment
behind their backs?"
Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but he was
most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by pedantry.
Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a nuisance in the
salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not the least for her epigrams. She
might go somewhere else and write all the epigrams she pleased. When he
banished her, in 1803, she merely crossed the Rhine into Germany, and
established herself at Weimar.
The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much
good humor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.
"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris for
two months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the castles,
which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a lady. No, let
her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. All Europe is open to
her—Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishes to write libels on me,
England is a convenient and inexpensive place. Only Paris is just a little too
near!"
Thus the emperor gibed the boy—he was only fifteen or sixteen—and
made fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign of malice in
what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The legend about

Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the waste-basket,
except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in boring him.
For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand—unattractive in person, yet
able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldom receiving it in
return; throwing herself at the head of every distinguished man, and
generally finding that he regarded her overtures with mockery. To
enumerate the men for whom she professed to care would be tedious, since
the record of her passions has no reality about it, save, perhaps, with two
exceptions.
She did care deeply and sincerely for Henri Benjamin Constant, the
brilliant politician and novelist. He was one of her coterie in Paris, and their
common political sentiments formed a bond of friendship between them.
Constant was banished by Napoleon in 1802, and when Mme. de Stael
followed him into exile a year later he joined her in Germany.
The story of their relations was told by Constant in Adolphe, while Mme.
de Stael based Delphine on her experiences with him. It seems that he was
puzzled by her ardor; she was infatuated by his genius. Together they went
through all the phases of the tender passion; and yet, at intervals, they
would tire of each other and separate for a while, and she would amuse
herself with other men. At last she really believed that her love for him was
entirely worn out.
"I always loved my lovers more than they loved me," she said once, and
it was true.
Yet, on the other hand, she was frankly false to all of them, and hence
arose these intervals. In one of them she fell in with a young Italian named
Rocca, and by way of a change she not only amused herself with him, but
even married him. At this time—1811—she was forty-five, while Rocca
was only twenty-three—a young soldier who had fought in Spain, and who
made eager love to the she-philosopher when he was invalided at Geneva.
The marriage was made on terms imposed by the middle-aged woman
who became his bride. In the first place, it was to be kept secret; and
second, she would not take her husband's name, but he must pass himself
off as her lover, even though she bore him children. The reason she gave for
this extraordinary exhibition of her vanity was that a change of name on her
part would put everybody out.

"In fact," she said, "if Mme. de Stael were to change her name, it would
unsettle the heads of all Europe!"
And so she married Rocca, who was faithful to her to the end, though she
grew extremely plain and querulous, while he became deaf and soon lost his
former charm. Her life was the life of a woman who had, in her own phrase,
"attempted everything"; and yet she had accomplished nothing that would
last. She was loved by a man of genius, but he did not love her to the end.
She was loved by a man of action, and she tired of him very soon. She had a
wonderful reputation for her knowledge of history and philosophy, and yet
what she knew of those subjects is now seen to be merely the scraps and
borrowings of others.
Something she did when she introduced the romantic literature into
France; and there are passages from her writings which seem worthy of
preservation. For instance, we may quote her outburst with regard to
unhappy marriages. "It was the subject," says Mr. Gribble, "on which she
had begun to think before she was married, and which continued to haunt
her long after she was left a widow; though one suspects that the word
'marriage' became a form of speech employed to describe her relations, not
with her husband, but with her lovers." The passage to which I refer is as
follows:
In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing all
other sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends upon the
conjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey to the grave without a
friend to support you or to regret you, is an isolation of which the deserts of
Arabia give but a faint and feeble idea. When all the treasure of your youth
has been given in vain, when you can no longer hope that the reflection of
these first rays will shine upon the end of your life, when there is nothing in
the dusk to remind you of the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and
colorless as a livid specter that precedes the night, your heart revolts, and
you feel that you have been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.
Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems less the
careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a termagant. It is
odd that the first two sentences recall two famous lines of Byron:

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence.

The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:
Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the lives of
men. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon how a woman
conducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to the rules of an unjust
world, the laws of morality itself are suspended in men's relations with
women. They may pass as good men, though they have caused women the
most terrible suffering which it is in the power of one human being to inflict
upon another. They may be regarded as loyal, though they have betrayed
them. They may have received from a woman marks of a devotion which
would so link two friends, two fellow soldiers, that either would feel
dishonored if he forgot them, and they may consider themselves free of all
obligations by attributing the services to love—as if this additional gift of
love detracted from the value of the rest!
One cannot help noticing how lacking in neatness of expression is this
woman who wrote so much. It is because she wrote so much that she wrote
in such a muffled manner. It is because she thought so much that her
reflections were either not her own, or were never clear. It is because she
loved so much, and had so many lovers—Benjamin Constant; Vincenzo
Monti, the Italian poet; M. de Narbonne, and others, as well as young Rocca
—that she found both love and lovers tedious.
She talked so much that her conversation was almost always mere
personal opinion. Thus she told Goethe that he never was really brilliant
until after he had got through a bottle of champagne. Schiller said that to
talk with her was to have a "rough time," and that after she left him, he
always felt like a man who was just getting over a serious illness. She never
had time to do anything very well.
There is an interesting glimpse of her in the recollections of Dr.
Bollmann, at the period when Mme. de Stael was in her prime. The worthy
doctor set her down as a genius—an extraordinary, eccentric woman in all
that she did. She slept but a few hours out of the twenty-four, and was
uninterruptedly and fearfully busy all the rest of the time. While her hair
was being dressed, and even while she breakfasted, she used to keep on
writing, nor did she ever rest sufficiently to examine what she had written.
Such then was Mme. de Stael, a type of the time in which she lived, so
far as concerns her worship of sensibility—of sensibility, and not of love;
for love is too great to be so scattered and made a thing to prattle of, to