The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-07-20


children; but they were by her precedent
lord. Eugene B~cauharnais was capable,
but he was not Il B%onaparte. The decree of
1907 naming jerome as successor was not
satisfactory. 1t began to be said that there
was a state necessity that an heir be born
to Napoleon himself. The state necessity
was not effectual with her who was nearly
forty-seven! The premises had one conclu-
sion only-diUorce.
All the world knows the story The
Empress had both man and nature against
her. AS to the Corsican, she had lived
with him for nearly fourteen years. She
knew too well the futility of resisting
him. 1t would seem that all expedicnts
were useless. At length the Emperor's
mind was made up. He broke his purpose
to Josephine as gently rs might be, at
Malmaison. The divorce was arranged on
the 10Th and 10th of December, 1909. The
Bonapartes had now full satisfaction. No
child Of Josephine should ever wear the
diadem of France. Napoleon did as much
as he might to alleviate her despair. He
left her Malmaison, her title of Empress,
and u pension of two million francs. He
had loved her with n fitful and tyrannical
fondnesS He had by no means been faith
ful to her; and many n Islander of the en-
vious said that she had been unfaithful to
him.
After the fallen, Whom? Would the En-.
peror of the French, son of the mulberry
woman of Ajaccio choose anothcr-as he
had chosen the firstly nature and ma.
lures law Orwould he calculate? Would
he find in Vendceo or Cotcs du Nord or
Lorraine some peasant girl, some Pucelle
of Arc, and make her-as no had made
himself-Imperial, and from her wait to
cp1 ry,,t, ~ t,,-, i, Ill H., - III
coveted-and necessary? Or would he,
hoping to pacify the past, choose some
princess out of the House of his friends
such friends as Gustavus or Alexander or
Frederick William or Francis?
The politician prevailed over the man,
even in Napoleon. The splendors of dy-
nastic glory obliterated the plebeian in
stincts of his nature. The eagle of Auster-
litZ dove into the thickct of the past, and
mated with a Hapsburgl Maria Louisa,
child of our well beloved brother, the good
and faith-keeping Francis, whose subjects
we lately met on the field of Wagram do,
the blood frozen there is still bright-red in
the iceD is our choice. BY this way we
will confirm our Imperial House; and our
King of Romes shall have a royal mother.
We will love her, by the political rulc-of-
three; and she shall love us, by the calcu.
lus of necessity.
There was little delay. Maria Louisa
was appalled, at the prospect-at the first.
The woman in such cases is hard to quench.
But Francis would have an Emperor for a
son-in-law; and the daughter of Francis
assented. With swift preliminaries the
royal cavalcade, on the 18th of March,
1910, swept out of Vienna, bearing her to
her fate. On the LIST of April, at the old
palace of St. Cloud, shining splendidly for
the occasion, the civil marriage was per-
formed. The Pope refused to approve the
divorce of Josephine. Most of the cardi-
nails, declining to bless the marriage, were
stripped of their scarlet regalia and ban.
ished from Paris.
In the Tuileries, Maria Louisa sought
at first to play the part of Imperatrice
with gaiety and goodwill. Tradition adds
that Napoleon loved her. Certainly he said
SO; and his future conduct in the marital
relation was more exemplary han before.
There were no more Madame Foures,
Countess Grassinis, Madame ***'s, Ste
phanies, E~loenores, Hortenses, Walewskas,
or other beautiful Uncertainties on the
horizon. But the ~vivacity and charm of
the court of Josephine never returned
She at least had accomplishments.
The new Empress fulfilled her part with
the apathetic smile of a Hapsburg. On the
night of the Goth of March, 1911, the If
tieth gun from the battery announced to
Paris a-tiptoe that the Imperial programme
had been fulfilled TO the letter; the King
of Rome was born! Josephine, at Nal,
maison, might almost have heard the ar
tillery n shouting. Would she nave
smiled II the firing had ceased with the
forty-ninth gun? That would nave meant
a daughter!
In May Of 1910 it could be said of Ma.
poleon that he had had his way. In a few
instances his prodigious dreams had dissi-
pated into naught; but only in a few. His
great scheme of planting French ~civiliza-
ton in Northeastern Africa and of carry
ing thence the tricolor to Damascus, Alep-
pc and Bagdad, had failed. His project of
making Constantinople the outpost of
France in the East had vanished like a
chimera. His hope of beating England on
the sea ended with Trafalgar. But for all
the rest, what was left unfulflled to the
Dreamer and Iconoclast? Out of the null
berry patch in AjacciO he had risen to the
supreme seat of power in the most splen-
did capital of the world And he was not
yet forty-one!
AS for war, that had uni into mutter-
ing and growing Oh the horizon. During
the year no great battle was fought in Eu