Memoirs of the life, exile, and conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, by the Count de Las Cases - Vol. III by Comte Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné de Las Cases

Author:Comte Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné de Las Cases [Cases, Comte Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné de Las]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782890263
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Wagram Press
Published: 2013-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

31st.—The Emperor rose very early, and took a turn round the park alone. On his return, not wishing to have any one disturbed, he desired my son, who had risen, to sit down under the tent, and write from his dictation: in this manner he employed himself for two hours. We all breakfasted with him.

We took an airing in the calash. The conversation turned on the doubts that were attached to various points of history. The Emperor made some very curious remarks on this subject, and concluded with a circumstance relating to the Regent. “If,” said he, “Louis XV. had, died in his childhood, and nothing was more possible, who would have doubted that the Duke of Orléans had poisoned the whole royal family? Who would have ventured to defend him? Had not one child survived, that Prince would not have had justice done him.” The Emperor then alluded to the character of the Duke of Orléans, and particularly to his errors in the affair of the legitimate princes. “There he degraded himself,“ said Napoleon; “not to say, however, that their cause was good. Louis XIV. usurped a right in nominating them to the succession. On the extinction of the Royal House, the choice of a Sovereign is unquestionably the prerogative of the nation. The act of Louis XIV. was doubtless an error into which that Monarch was betrayed by his own greatness. He conceived that everything emanating from him must necessarily be great. Yet he seemed to entertain a suspicion that the world might not be exactly of his opinion; for he took precautions to consolidate his work by giving his natural children in marriage to the legitimate princes and princesses of the royal family. As to the Regency, it is very certain that it devolved by right on the Duke of Orléans. Louis XIV.’s will was a downright absurdity: it was a violation of our fundamental laws. France was a monarchy, and he gave us a republic for a Regency.”

The Emperor then mentioned Madame de Maintenon, whose career, he said, was most extraordinary. She was, he observed, the Bianca Capello{13} of her age; but less romantic, and not quite so amusing. Pursuing his historical doubts, he said a great deal on the subject of Madame de Maintenon’s marriage with Louis XIV.. He declared that he was sometimes inclined to regard the circumstance as very problematical, in spite of all that was said about it in the Memoirs of the time.

“The fact is,” observed he, “that there does not, and never did, exist any official and authentic proof of the marriage. What could be Louis XIV.’s object in keeping the measure so strictly secret, both from his contemporaries and posterity? and how happened it that the Noailles family, to whom Madame de Maintenon was related, suffered nothing to transpire on the subject? This was the more singular considering that Madame de Maintenon survived Louis XIV.”

The Emperor, feeling somewhat fatigued this evening, retired to rest early. He seemed indisposed and low spirited.

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