Marie Louise

“ The public did wrong to demand of Marie Louise passionate returns and devotion when her nature could inspire her only with a feeling of duty and respect for a soldier who had regarded her only as a German hostage and a pledge of posterity. Her constraint lessened her natural charms, darkened her expression, dimmed her wit, and burdened her heart. She was looked upon as a foreign decoration attached to the columns of the throne. Even history, written in ignorance of the truth, and inspired by the resentment of Napoleon's courtiers, has slandered this sovereign. ”

“ You shall know, Marie-Louise—to-night, when Father Anton is there to hear, and has blessed us, and made Marie-Louise my little wife! And then that little while in Paris that you will understand—and then—home! Ah, Marie-Louise, can you not see it now—the blue water, blue with the wonderful colour that only God can make, and the white beach where we played when we were little children, and the boats, Marie-Louise, and the brave, true, loyal friends! Home, Marie-Louise, home, home, home—to Bernay-sur-Mer! Ah, is not God good? ”

“ Marie Louise found more luxury and pleasure at the Tuileries and at Compiègne than at the Burg or at Schoenbrunn. Modest as she was, the ingenious flattery, the delicate homage, she received from all quarters could not fail to affect her. The sympathy with which her maid-of-honor, the Duchess of Montebello, inspired her, soon grew into a warm and firm friendship.
Napoleon had particular regard for his young wife, and in his love there was a shade of fatherly protection. He was not yet forty-one. Success and glory had given to his mature face a greater beauty than it had worn in his youth. ”

“ Her ideas in her last years grew to resemble those of her childhood, and she was perpetually denouncing the principles of the French Revolution and of the liberalism which pursued her even in the Duchy of Parma. France has reproached her with abandoning Napoleon, and still more perhaps for having given two obscure successors to the most famous man of modern times.
If Marie Louise is not a very sympathetic figure, no story is more touching and more melancholy than that of her son's life and death. It is a tale of hope deceived by reality; of youth and beauty cut down in their flower ”

“ Marie Louise did not have the character of her great-grandmother Marie Thérèse, or that of her great-aunt Marie Antoinette. She rather resembled the wife of Louis XIV. or that of Louis XV. She would have led a calm, modest, harmless life, like those two queens, if her fate had not placed her amid unforeseen and terrible events, the shock of which she could not endure. In 1812 we see her a loving mother, a faithful wife, a worthy sovereign. If Napoleon had adopted a less imprudent policy, all that would have lasted. ”

“ This desire was plainly present in Marie Louise.
Yet, to be just, she cared as little for men as she did for society. The thing she enjoyed was her idea of herself. Her greatest pleasure was in looking at herself from an outsider’s point of view, and admiring, almost envying. She liked, now and then, to imagine herself a spoiled beauty, going from partner to partner, surrounded by men, tossing a word here, a smile there; bestowing life or death by a glance given or withheld. ”

“ The men who had shadowed Marie Louise had months before given her up as hopelessly correct. But guardian angels were still provided for Nicky Easton; and one of them, seeing this meeting, took Marie Louise back into the select coterie of the suspects.
There’s no cure for your bodily aches and pains like terror. It lifts the paralytic from his bed, makes the lame scurry, and gives the blind eyes enough for running. Marie Louise’s fatigue fell from her like a burden whose straps are slit. ”

“ Thanks to the queen-mother, and very much to the wrath of the Camarera Mayor, Marie Louise was sometimes permitted to see the Marquise de Villars, the French ambassadress, and together they would practise the language of the fan, which no one but a native-born Spanish woman can speak properly. Marie Louise would gaze with admiration, too, at the walk of her maids of honour, so different from that of even the great ladies of France. ”

“ She belonged to a race which had never felt a warm love for the Bourbons; while Josephine, who was born in a family of Royalists, had remained faithful, even when on the Imperial throne, to her devotion to the old Royalty. Marie Louise indulged in no illusions. She knew that the courtiers, under the appearance of adoration which amounted to servility, were really concealing a depth of malice and ill-will, which was the more dangerous the more it was hidden, and that the very ones who were burning incense before her would be the most delighted to catch her tripping. ”

“ Madame Durand says that Marie Louise felt the need of a friend, and that the Duchess won her confidence and good graces to such an extent that the Empress could not do without her; she got to love her like a sister, and tried to prove her affection by great confidence to her and to her children. She was always delighted to choose presents that the Duchess would like, and offered them to her with charming amiability. ”

“ For two years nothing but flattery, homage, applause, music, triumphal arches, magnificence, splendid festivities; and, after all, how poor and empty it all was!
So far from her husband, her guide and protector, Marie Louise felt alone and strange in the grand palace of Saint Cloud. It was then that she began to suffer from those attacks of homesickness which made her long for the neighborhood of Vienna. Up to that day there had been nothing but fairy-like splendor; the young sovereign had seen only the brilliant side of the Empire. ”

“ Small and without beauty, dark of complexion, but with some grace, with elegance and above all carriage, Marie Louise of Parma was at once superstitious and passionate, ignorant, uneasy, with a very frivolous soul as a foundation, with obstinacy without firmness, with artifice without intelligence, with intrigue leading to no result, more covetousness than ambition, much emptiness of mind, still more of heart. ”

“ She would never oppose her husband, whose slightest wish she regarded as a command. She would appease his few stubborn foes of the French aristocracy, and put a stop to the last surviving backbiting of the Faubourg Saint Germain. As a bond of union between the past and the present, she brought not to France alone, but to all Europe, stability and repose, and rendered the foundations of the Imperial edifice firm and indestructible. The Emperor's marriage seemed his greatest triumph. For her part, Marie Louise was pleased with her new throne. ”

“ The Empress was not once insulted or slandered. The bitterest foes of her husband respected her. Moreover, Napoleon was far more attractive than Louis XVI., and Marie Louise was soon a mother, while Marie Antoinette long endured a barrenness for which she was not to blame.
The happiness of Marie Louise lasted but little more than two years, but it was all without a cloud. The mistake that historians always make in discussing celebrities is that they try to make a single portrait instead of a series of portraits, according to the different ages and circumstances. ”

“ Needless to say, Marie Louise had no wish to improve on her father’s arrangements. From this time on, “Mr. Mullins, my father’s lawyer,” figured not a little in her conversation.
On the whole, the news excited her no more than it excited the town at large. To Marie Louise her fortune was more a contribution to her romantic personality than anything else. Instead of saying to herself: “If I were rich, I should——” she now said: “Some day I will——” but the prophecies were almost as far away as ever. ”

“ Those who had supervised Marie Louise's education rightly thought that the greatest charm in a young girl was innocence. She had been brought up with the most scrupulous care. The books to be placed in the hands of the archduchesses were first carefully read, and any improper passages or even words were excised; no male animals were admitted into their apartments, but only females, these being endowed with more modest instincts. ”

“ Human life has its seasons like the year. Is anything less like a brilliant spring day than a gloomy winter's day? In his history of the Restoration, Lamartine has drawn a picture of the Empress Marie Louise which seems tolerably exact for the period after the calamities that befell the Empire, but inapplicable to the happy days of the mother of the King of Rome. "Marie Louise," he writes, "sought refuge in ceremony, in retreat and silence from the ill-will that pursued her at every step.... Napoleon loved her from a feeling of superiority and pride. ”

“ His first wife was Marie Louise, daughter of Philip, Duke of Orleans, by Henrietta Maria of England. Transplanted from the brilliant Court [254] of France, to the stiff formality of Spain, and the Spaniards, at a time when the jealousy of France was so great, that the Mistress of the Robes was said to have wrung her parrots’ necks for speaking French, Marie Louise, the wife of a half idiot King, bore herself wisely and bravely, and during the few short years of her reign, gained an influence for good, over her husband, who loved her dearly. ”

“ He was twenty years older than she, and always wore a large black band to hide the scar of a wound by which he had lost an eye. As diplomatist and as a soldier he had been one of the most persistent and one of the most skilful of Napoleon's enemies. General the Count of Neipperg, as he called himself, had been especially active in persuading two Frenchmen, Bernadotte and Murat, to take up arms against France. Since 1814 he had been most devoted to Marie Louise, and he felt or pretended to feel for her an affection on which she did not fear to smile. ”

“ Thus: he was to be permitted to hand Marie Louise into the coach on one side of the dark and narrow archway of the outworks, when she would leave it in a moment and unseen, by the other. My heart beat quickly and painfully as the sunset deepened on the mountains; as the moon arose, the night drew on and the moment of escape approached when Marie Louise and I would be together—together and cast upon the world never in life to be separated more! I carefully examined the two horses Dundrennan kept for us at the back postern of the tower ”

“ The former Empress of the French has been also more severely condemned for her two morganatic marriages,—one with Count Neipperg, an Austrian general and a bitter enemy of Napoleon, the other with Count de Bombelles, a Frenchman who left France to enter the Austrian service. Certainly Marie Louise was neither a model wife nor a model widow, and there is nothing surprising in the severity with which her contemporaries judged her, a severity which doubtless history will not modify. ”

“ There was no use in denying even to herself that the man had aroused in her—what should she call it?—a desire to cultivate him a little, since he would be so new, so fresh, so quite different. And Marie-Louise was at the moment now actually in her employ as—one could not call her a servant, it was Marie-Louise's own house, and she was only there to help for a little while at the curé's request—but still—the colour burned red in Myrna's cheeks. ”

“ His manner was always so perfectly friendly, that Marie Louise, rejecting the obvious explanation, began very soon to persuade herself that he had a reason for such self-control. It is a dangerous moment when it becomes necessary to read below the surface. ”

“ III. Kindness of heart is one of the virtues which is made to do duty for many minor faults, and when Marie Louise opened the Sunday Watch-Dog on the morning of the day on which she was to lunch with Miss Bowles, she really feared she had erred through too easy amiability. A full-length portrait of herself in evening dress took up one of the outside pages, labeled, “Miss Marie Louise Carman, multimillionaire, philanthropist, and débutante.” The rather weak climax did not strike Marie Louise, who was taken up with the second word in the series. ”

“ And now for a portrait of the young bride. I quote from Miss Gearey:
"A tall, stately maiden, fresh and youthful, abounding in health and strength, with blue eyes, blonde hair, a pink-and-white complexion, and an expression of innocence and candour. Marie Louise could hardly be styled pretty, and her figure was too much inclined to embonpoint to be really graceful, but she possessed the indefinable charm of youth and the attractions which may be derived from a clear complexion, an abundance of chestnut hair, and an exquisite set of teeth. ”

“ Marie Louise’s imagination saw magnificent glimpses of herself in these romances. She considered herself far from good-looking, but was always hoping that some day she would discover a style of dress that would gather her beauties and defects into one tremendous, decided effect. ”

“ But when she was obliged to appear in public she became extremely timid; formal society served of itself to isolate her; and as persons who are not naturally haughty always appear so with a poor grace, Marie Louise, being always much embarrassed on reception days, was often the subject of unjust criticism; for, as I have said, her coldness in reality arose from an excessive timidity. ”

“ Louis.
"Of course it's an awful cropper to take, and all that; but I'm not sure but what she's done a wise thing, though all the women are howling at her like mad," continued Lord Clairvaux; "a woman can't live for ever on chiffons, you see."
"Most women can—admirably. They buy at eighty as much white hair, the coiffeurs tell me, as they buy blonde or black at twenty." ”