Memoirs of Countess Potocka by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780766190238
Goodreads: 24544801
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing
Published: 1820-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV—THE COURT

THE EMPEROR—MARIE-LOUISE—COURT PARADOXES—ELISA—PAULINE BORGHESE—THE QUEEN OF NAPLES—THE PRINCESS DE TALLEYRAND—COUNTESS TYSZKIEWICZ’S CIRCLE.

AS soon as the empress was installed at the Tuileries the presentations were proceeded with. As a foreigner, I was to be presented not only to the emperor and empress, but also to all the queens and princesses of the family. Each had her day, and so every morning it was a case of a long and fatiguing toilet, and of spending the best hours of the day in putting on and taking off a court dress. In the evening came rest—at the theatre.

The emperor received about noon, in his study. Standing with one hand leaning on his desk, he waited, bestowing a gracious glance on you if you were young and pretty.

He received me with unusual civility, which considerably diminished the awkwardness of the ceremony. He was good enough to ask news of everybody in my family.

Leaving the emperor’s study, we passed into the empress’ waiting-room, where a number of people were already assembled. She was quitting her apartments, followed by a numerous and dazzling train. The taste with which she was dressed had made her a little less ugly, but the expression of her face remained the same. Not an affable smile, not an inquiring look lit up that wooden face. She went round the circle of her visitors, moving from one to the other like those machine dolls that go when they are wound up, showing off their stiff, slender figures, and their large, pale-blue, porcelain eyes, staring and fixed.

The emperor walked at her side, prompting her in what she had to say, chiefly to the people whom he wished to favour. When my turn came, the lady who was presenting me having given the young sovereign my name, I distinctly overheard the words, very graceful, muttered by Napoleon. She repeated them so drily, and with such a Teutonic accent, that they charmed me very slightly.

This court, so magnificent from a distance, lost by being seen at close quarters. A sort of confusion and discord were observable there which counteracted the air of greatness and dignity one had a right to expect. The wives of the marshals, little accustomed to the court mantle, were placed by the side of the most elegant and best dressed women. It was almost the same thing with their husbands, whose embroidered uniforms, so resplendent on parade, so fine on the field of battle, contrasted unpleasantly with rather uncultured language and manners. It was like a rehearsal, at which the actors were trying on their dresses and repeating their parts. This extraordinary mixture would have evoked laughter if the principal character had not inspired a sort of respect and fear, which made the idea of absurdity vanish, or at least annulled it.

Napoleon’s sisters did not resemble each other in the least.

Elisa, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, added to her brother’s features an infinitely harder expression. A great deal of mind and character was attributed to her; nevertheless, I have never heard anything quoted that she did or said.

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