From the Leisure Hour. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE MOTHER OF LOUIS NAPOLEON. Ir was a fine autumn day, says a celebrated French writer, when I had occasion, in the course of my wanderings, to pass through the town of Constance. I was informed that the château of Arenenberg, the residence of the Duchess of St. Lece, the Ex-Queen Hortense, was si tuated only half a league distant from this ancient city. I felt desirous, therefore, to place my homage at the feet of this fallen sovereign, to see this queen -this graceful daughter of Josephinethis sister of Prince Eugene-this once sparkling jewel of Napoleon's crown. I had often heard Queen Hortense spoken of in my youth as a sort of good fairy, very gracious and very beautiful. I had been told of the young maidens she had dowered, the mothers whose sons she had bought off after conscription, and the condemned culprits whose pardon she had obtained. Added to all this, I still retained a vivid recollection of both the words and the air of various songs composed by her, and which my sister used to sing to me in my boyhood. In those happy days, the idea of a queen who both composed and sung was sufficient to transport her in my imagination into fairy regions. I resolved, therefore, to gratify my longcherished desire of becoming acquainted with the ex-queen; and, though it was too early in the morning to present myself in person at the château, I left my card at the door, and then, springing into a boat, took a row on the lake to an adjacent is land. On returning, after this brief excursion, to my temporary home, I found awaiting me an invitation to dinner from Madame de St. Lece. but from the thoughts which filled my mind and stirred all the deeper feelings of my heart. I proceeded slowly on my way, and more than once felt tempted to retrace my steps. I had an indistinct dread lest my illusion should be dispelled, and the dream of my early years should lose its enchantment. Suddenly, however, on entering a shady avenue, I perceived three ladies, accompanied by a young man, advancing toward me. Instinctively I recognized in one amongst them the ExQueen Hortense, and hastened toward her. Little could she have divined the nature of the emotions which at that moment filled my breast-emotions of mingled respect, pity, and admiration. Had she been alone, I should have felt tempted to bend my knee before her. My countenance probably betrayed, in some degree, the conflicting feelings by which I was agitated, for, smiling sweetly, she held out her hand to me, and said: "It is very good of you to come and visit a poor exile like me." As she thus expressed her gratitude for the trifling mark of respect I had shown, I could not help mentally exclaiming: "In this instance, at least, the dreams of my youth have proved no deception; this tone of voice, this glance, exactly realize the ideal I had formed when thinking of the daughter of Josephine." The Queen placed her arm in mine, and led me through the grounds. Time glided imperceptibly away, until at last she proposed to me to enter the château. In the drawing-room, the first object which arrested my attention was a magnificent portrait. "How very beautiful!" I exclaimed. "Yes, it is a beautiful painting," rejoined Madame de St. Lece; "It represents Bonaparte at the Bridge of Lodi." "It is painted by Gros, is it not?" "Yes, it is his, copied from nature, and marvelously like." The château of Arenenburg wears by no means the aspect of a royal residence; it is simply a pleasant-looking home, such as might belong to any private gentleman of wealth. The emotion which I felt on approaching its precincts did not therefore arise from external circumstances, i I stood for some moments absorbed in thought, and when I suddenly started, roused from my reverie, I perceived the eyes of Madame de St. Lece fixed upon me with a smiling expression. She then rose, and asked me whether I should like to accompany her, and she would show me her imperial reliquary. I was only too happy to accept the offer, and she conducted me toward a piece of furniture in the form of a book-case, fitted up with glass panes, and on each shelf of which were ranged different objects which had belonged to Josephine or to Napoleon. had rested at the latest moment of his existence, and which had been fondly pressed to his expiring lips. I asked to see the sword which Marchand had brought back from St. Helena, and which the Duke of Reichstadt had bequeathed to Prince Louis Napoleon; but this dying bequest had not yet been forwarded to the Queen, and she seemed to fear it might never reach her hands. At this moment the dinner-bell rang. "So soon!" I exclaimed. "You shall visit my reliquary again tomorrow," she kindly replied. First in order came a portfolio, marked with a J. and an N., and containing the familiar correspondence of the Emperor and Empress. Every letter was auto-to graph, and many amongst them were written from the fields of Marengo, of Austerlitz, or of Jena-hastily scribbled at the cannon-mouth, and each containing tidings of victory. Next followed the talisman of Charlemagne, and to this relic a singular history was attached. When the tomb in which the great monarch had lain buried for well nigh a thousand years was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle, his skeleton was found clad in his robes of state; the double crown of France and Germany rested on his fleshless brow; by his side, together with his pilgrim's purse, hung his good sword Joyeuse-this sword with which, as the monk of St. Denis relates, he felled in twain, at one stroke, a knight in full armor; his feet rested on the shield of massive gold given him by Pope Leo; and around his neck hung an amulet, which secured to him victory in war. This amulet consisted of what was said to be a piece of the true cross, sent to him by the Empress Irene. It was set in emeralds, and suspended by a chain of massive gold. The citizens of Aix-la-Chapelle presented this talisman to Napoleon when he made his entry into their town; and Napoleon, in 1811, one day playfully threw this chain around the neck of Queen Hortense, owning to her, at the same time, that he had worn it at the battles of Austerlitz and Wagram, even as Charlemagne had done a thousand years before. The next relics shown me by the Duchess were, the belt worn by Napoleon in Egypt, the wedding-ring he had himself placed on her mother's hand, and, last of all, the portrait of the King of Rome, embroidered by Marie Louise-a portrait on which the eyes of the dying conqueror When dinner was concluded, we returned the drawing-room, and in a few moments Madame Récamier was announced. This lady, too, was in her own way a queen-a queen of beauty and of intellect; and Madame de St. Lece received her as a sister. I have often heard Madame Récamier's age discussed. I only saw her, it is true, by candle-light, dressed in black, and with a vail of the same color falling over her neck and shoulders; but I should certainly not have supposed her to be more than five-and-twenty, judging from the youthful freshness of her voice, the beauty of her eyes, and her exquisitely molded hand. It struck me, therefore, as something singular to hear these two ladies converse together about the Directory and the Consulate, as of periods in which they had lived, and with the events of which they were familiar. After some time, Madame de St. Lece was earnestly requested to take her place at the piano. She acceded to our wishes, and sung several airs which she had lately set to music. "Might I venture to make one request ?" I inquired. "And what may your petition be ?" rejoined the ex-queen. "That you would sing one of your old compositions." "Which of them ?" she inquired. "You leave me to march to glory.'" "That was one of the very first I ever wrote," she exclaimed; "it dates from 1809. How do you happen to remember it? You could scarcely have been born when it was in vogue." "I was only five years and a half old; but my sister, who was some years older than myself, used to sing to me, and this was my favorite song." "It is very unfortunate, then," replied the Duchess, "that the words have altogether passed from my memory." "I remember them well, however," I rejoined; and rising from my seat, I stood behind her at the piano, and began to repeat to her the lines so familiar to my memory. "My poor mother!" exclaimed Madame de St. Lece, with a deep sigh, when I had finished the recital. "It is a mournful recollection," I replied. "Mournful indeed," said the Duchess. "It was in 1808, as you must be aware, that the rumors concerning a divorce began to circulate: they smote my poor mother to the heart; and, as the Emperor was on the point of setting out for Wagram, she requested M. de Segur to write a song on the subject of his departure. The Count brought her the lines you have just repeated; my mother asked me to set them to music; and I sang them to the Emperor on the evening preceding his departure. My poor mother-I could almost fancy I see her still-anxiously watching the Emperor's care-worn countenance, and seeking to discover the impression made upon his mind by the words of this song, so admirably suited to the circumstances in which they both were placed at that moment. The Em peror listened attentively until the last note had ceased to vibrate; then, turning toward my mother, he said, in a tone which betrayed deep emotion: You are the best creature I have ever known;' and so saying, he hastened from the apartment. My mother burst into tears; and from that moment she felt that her fate was sealed. You can now readily understand what touching recollections are associated in my memory with this air, and how vividly it transports me back to bygone years." "Pardon me," I exclaimed; "I ought not to have recalled it to your mind." "On the contrary," replied Queen Hortense, as she again seated herself at the piano, so many other sorrows have passed over me since then, that I can recall those days without bitterness." The ex-queen then ran her fingers over the keys, and, after a plaintive prelude, sang the same touching words she had sung before Napoleon on that memorable occasion. Thus ended my evening at Arenenburg; and it was with a heart filled with conflicting emotions that I quitted the presence of Hortense, the Ex-Queen of Holland-the daughter of Josephine, and the mother of Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of the French, THE IMPERIAL FRANCE O F TO-DAY. WHO can imagine the effect of an announcement that the British nation had ceased growing? Between the years 1819 and 1855 we contributed two million three hundred thousand immigrants to the population of the United States: within the same period we transmitted vast numbers of colonists to Canada and Australia; since 1800 the inhabitants of our own islands have doubled, in spite of a great famine; what, then, should we think if this process of expansion were suddenly to be arrested? Yet such a suspension of national vitality has taken place in France. From 1841 to 1846, 1,170,000 souls were added to the population; from 1851 to 1856, only 256,000; in 1854 and 1855, the deaths actually exceeded the births, Statists are seeking for explanations of this formidable result; many causes are suggested; to each of these we wish to assign its full value-even to emigration, although not more than ten thousand persons annually quit France for the colonies, England, or America-a number compensated for by the arrival of foreigners. We may go back to the great wars when one prodigious army after another, amounting to a total of two millions, was annihilated under the flag of Napoleon, the idol of the Empire, when it was twice found necessary to reduce the military meantime, the public expenditure increases enormously; the Empire wears literally a mural crown; its works in stone and mortar are confessedly imposing. It has its golden House; it delights in the colossal; with Dion Cassius, Louis Napoleon perceives no difference between public and private funds; while the life of France is drained away as by a mysterious disease, façades are certainly added to Paris. standard, when boys were marched to Lutzen and Leipsic, because the supply of men had failed; but the fact interposes, that during the reign of Louis Philippe the energies of France seemed to revive, and more than a million was added to her population within five years. We will allow all due importance to the influence of small agricultural holdings, producing an inexorable entail of poverty, to the ex-broad, strategical streets, and ornamental tension of the Malthusian economy from the capital to the villages, to the succession of bad harvests, grape blights, silk-worm failures, and other discouragements; these details cannot fairly be left out of the calculation; but do they account for the astonishing and alarming cessation of vital energy we now witness in France? In what have the French people so materially changed since the five years from 1841, when, with the same division of property, the same aversion to large families and no exemption from natural inflictions, they multiplied with comparative rapidity? Whatever change or manners took place after 1851 was certainly preceded by wholesale change of institutions. In front of the whole inquiry stands the conspicuous certainty that, under the Empire, the growth of population has everywhere been checked; while in many places the births have not made up for the deaths. Not that France is overcrowded. Belgium contains 147 inhabitants to the square mile; England 130; France only 68; yet, with ample scope for development, the body of the nation dwindles instead of dilating. At the same time, the necessaries of life are produced in smaller quantities in the provinces, and luxury flourishes at the capital; the poor congregate in the great cities; an immense displacement of wealth is paraded for prosperity; Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, St. Etienne are swollen by the formation of new faubourgs; thousands forsake the fields without entering the factory; the proportion of deaths among adults is singularly large; but what other process is going on at the same time? The capital that was formerly employed in cultivation or in manufacturing industry, has since 1851 been absorbed in Paris and expend ed in loans or in luxury; prices rise; bread is artificially cheapened for the dangerous populations of the faubourgs; to the peasantry it is become dearer; France is being gradually reduced in these respects to the level of Spain and Turkey. In the We may take advantage of another opportunity to estimate the value of Louis Napoleon's monuments. Our present business is with the melting of the population, and the causes of its sudden decay from 1851 to 1856. Even if we cast in the gross total of the deportations to Algeria and Cayenne, they sink out of sight in the chasm. It is true that the departments signalized as having experienced the most sensible arrest or decrease of population are precisely those which were more than decimated by the mixed Commission of December-those which were marked in red on the map as strongholds of the Socialist democracy, those from which the agricultural, mechanical, and professional classes were deported wholesale, without trial, to flood the conflict colonies of the Empire. The usurpation of 1851 passed over these provinces like a desolating war; yet some deeper and more abiding cause must be at work; it is, we are compelled to believe, the corruption of society by the example and influence of the Empire. If the great and expanding nation can be violently arrested in its career, its vital forces turned abruptly into sordid channels, its moral consciousness blinded and benumbed, the circulation of its intellectual activity suspended; if it can be cut from the traditions of the past, bewildered by stock-jobbing, encouraged to waste its energies in sensual excesses, deterred by fear or ridicule from healthy or exalted pursuits;-if it can undergo this change without being enfeebled, attenuated, and exhausted, we must utterly repudiate the doctrine of all history-that a deadening despotism, applying itself only to satisfy the material cravings of the populace, infuses into the blood of the debauched nation the virus of a poison. There is now in France no such thing as public life; it follows that private manners are depraved. The Seine might whisper a story to the Dead Sea, and France might show other causes for the or the stability of the Government. The failure of its productive powers than the | Spanish Kingdom exhausted, and the Turdetermination of domestic economists to kish Empire disorganized, are now the limit their family liabilities. Louis Napo- European parallels of Imperial France. leon pretends to stimulate agriculture It may be that some historian of a future the agricultural population is diminishing; day, when recalling the glories of modern he affects to aggrandize Paris-Paris is Augustus, will point to the architectural fed at the expense of the provinces; he trophies of the capital; but other histopoints to developed commerce-it scarce- rians will record that, from the first to the ly compensates for diminished production sixth year of Louis Napoleon's reign, it at home; he is the patron of the working was that France, instead of advancing, classes-they have a falling-sickness among began to recede, and that, instead of multhem; the one flourishing class in France tiplying and abounding, her population consists of speculators, gorged, we repeat, diminished and decayed, exhibiting to by vast displacements of wealth, but add- the New World the phenomenon of aring nothing to the resources of the country resting development in the Old. From Sharpe's London Magazine. THE UNFLINCHING I SAW a stately lily uprear it's snowy head The sunbeams kissed it's petals, and the zephyrs Bearing words of love and joy upon their balmy sigh; I heard at eventide a strain of melody, so rare I scarcely breathed the while it stole upon the stilly air The moon was in the heavens, and not a sound was heard, And Nature all seemed listening to that most matchless bird; But alas! the song had ceased, and the night-winds For Death, the unflinching Murderer, claimed the I saw an infant playing beside a cottage door, But in the cold and drear churchyard the mother For Death, the unflinching Murderer, claimed her baby for his own. I saw a lovely maiden in the glory of her youth, I saw her with another at the altar blushing stand, But the lover weeps in sadness, his fair young bride is gone MURDERER. For Death, the unflinching Murderer, has claimed her for his own. I saw a young and noble man, of Nature's finest mold, He sat upon his great black steed, type of the free and bold, He waved adieu to his baby boy, and to his fair young wife, He waved adieu, and rode to join the battle's stirring strife; But I saw him laid upon the bier, I heard the widow's moan For Death, the unflinching Murderer, claimed her husband for his own. I saw an old man crowned with years, his locks were silvery gray, He sat in his arm-chair by the fire throughout the long, long day, His children and their children came, and round him fondly pressed, That by the one they loved so well once more they might be blessed; But-that hallowed seat is vacant now, the good old man is gone For Death, the unflinching Murderer, has claimed him for his own. And thus we lose all that we love upon this changing All that we value most all of the greatest worth, ours, We listen to glad melody, and tend the sweet pure flowers; But, the while we madly love them thus, we find ourselves alone For Death, the unflinching Murderer, claims all things for his own. |