Part 7

On the other hand, there were men in whom the great Napoleon inspired the most bitter hatred. Such a one was the Prussian general, Field-Marshal von Kleist, to whom the Emperor sent the Legion of Honour. Baron von Kleist, however, declined to wear it, and, purchasing a toy bust of Napoleon, hung the decoration around its neck, always carrying the bust with him wherever he went. The Emperor heard of this contemptuous treatment and was greatly incensed thereby, declaring that he would shoot von Kleist if he could catch him, but this he never did. The Baron had conceived a violent antipathy for the Man of Destiny on account of his rough and indeed almost brutal treatment of the gentle Queen of Prussia (Königin Louise), always declaring, indeed, that it had been with the greatest difficulty that he had restrained himself from drawing a loaded pistol from his pocket and killing the Emperor during the progress of the interview between the two sovereigns, at which he had been present.

Baron von Kleist, when in command of a portion of the Prussian army in 1813, greatly contributed to the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig. Disregarding the cautious orders of Prince Schwatzenburg, the Commander-in-chief, he marched by night across the heights of Nollendorf, and after a fierce battle completely defeated Marshal Vandamme, capturing sixty thousand men—practically the whole left wing of the French army. For this brilliant military feat he was made Graf von Nollendorf, and received from his King a complete dinner-service of fine Berlin china, included in which were several large vases, bearing on the one side the arms of von Kleist, and on the other the cross of Kulm, a decoration especially instituted for those who had taken part in the battle of that name. This dinner-service is still in the possession of the old soldier’s descendants.

It is believed that the only passport ever signed by Napoleon for an Englishman to visit England was one given to a Mr. Manning. This gentleman, whilst at Oxford, received what he considered to be a very serious affront or injury from the authorities of his college, and took the matter so much to heart that he migrated to France, where he became the intimate of many clever and learned Frenchmen, including Carnot and the Abbé Remusat. Becoming interested in the East, Mr. Manning afterwards set out on a long journey through Thibet, China, and Japan, travelling, it must be added, in native dress. In after-years, owing to his intimate acquaintance with the Chinese language, he was prevailed upon to accompany an English expedition to China, where, by a somewhat extraordinary chance, his vessel being shipwrecked, he was picked up and taken to St. Helena. Here he had an interview with Napoleon, during which, being asked by whom his French passport was signed, he tactfully replied, “Par l’Empereur,” an answer which much pleased the illustrious captive, who, by the special order of Hudson Lowe, was not allowed to be addressed otherwise than as General Buonaparte.

It may not be generally known, perhaps, that from time to time assertions have been made—some of the most emphatic kind—that Napoleon once actually passed a considerable time in London. The date of his visit is said to have been 1791-92, and the place of his residence George Street, Strand. Whilst in all probability there is not the slightest foundation for such a story, it would be curious to know from what circumstance such a report arose.

About the time that I was a child there was written a poem, in which Napoleon and his old army were resuscitated, by the very clever and original pen of a young Hungarian poet, Baron von Sedlitz by name. This poem, called the “Mitternachtliche Heerschau,” or “Midnight Review,” is still, I fancy, very well known on the Continent, but the English translations seem to be now totally forgotten. One of these, by William Ball, was set to music and sung by the famous singer Braham (the father of Frances, Lady Waldegrave) about 1831. He was an old man at the time, but nevertheless is said to have rendered the words with such weird and striking effect as to produce a very great impression upon his hearers. The version in question, which has been reprinted in _Notes and Queries_ within comparatively recent years, rather fails to convey the impressive simplicity of effect attained by the original poem. There are lines, however, which are certainly striking:—

And at the midnight hour the chieftain leaves his grave, Slowly he comes on his charger white amid his chosen brave; The ranks salute their silent lord, the stately march renew, And now with clanging music pass before their master’s view. . . . . . . . On their airy steeds on every side the thronging dead obey, The blood-stained hosts of the battlefield in all their fierce array, Ghastly beneath their glowing helms the grinning skulls appear, And countless weapons high in air their bony hands uprear. . . . . . . .

The weird scene which these verses describe has been depicted by Raffet, in one of whose lithographs the spectre of the great Emperor is shown passing a review of a phantom army.

Another translation of the “Midnight Review” was written by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, a well-known writer in his day, who at one time edited the _Era_, and also did a good deal of work for publications like the _Keepsake_ and _Heath’s Picturesque Annual_. This version has not, to the best of my knowledge, been reprinted since it first appeared in a quarterly magazine (now somewhat difficult to obtain), about seventy-seven years ago, which will be my excuse for giving it here side by side with a French version which, it may be added, the Government of Charles X. sought to suppress. Though no great poetic genius is shown in Mr. Ritchie’s lines, avowedly a word for word translation, the writer may nevertheless be said to have caught something of the simple and impressive dignity which caused the German poem to create such a sensation when it first appeared, some six or seven years after the Emperor’s death.

THE MIDNIGHT REVIEW

Nachts um die zwölfte Stunde Verlasst der Tambour sein Grabe, Macht mit der Trummel die Runde, Geht ewig auf und ab.

A minuit, de sa tombe Le tambour se lève et sort, Fait sa tournée et marche Battant la caisse bien fort.

De ses bras décharnés Remue conjointement Les baguettes, bat la retraite, Réveil et roulement.

La caisse sonne étrange, Fortement elle retentit, Dans leur fosse en ressuscitent Les vieux soldats péris;

Et qui au fond du nord Sous la glace enroidis, Et qui trop chaudement gissent Sous la terre d’Italie.

Et sous la bourbe du Nil Et le sable de l’Arabie; Ils quittent leur sépulture, Leurs armes ils ont saisi.

Et à minuit, de sa tombe Le trompette se lève et sort, Monte à cheval et sonne La trompe bruyant et fort.

Alors sur chevaux aériens Arrivent les cavaliers, Vieux escadrons célèbres Sanglants et balafrés.

Sous le casque, leurs crânes blanchâtres Ricanent, et fièrement Leurs mains osseuses soulèvent Leurs glaives longs et tranchants.

Et à minuit, de sa tombe Le chef se lève et sort; A pas lents il s’avance Suivi de l’état-major.

Petit chapeau il porte, Habit sans ornemens, Petite épée pour arme Au côte gauche lui pend.

La lune à pale lueur La vaste plaine éclaire; L’homme au petit chapeau Des troupes revue va faire.

Les rangs présentent les armes, Lors sur l’épaule les mettant, Toute l’armée devant le chef Défile tambour battant.

On voit former un cercle Des capitaines et généraux; An plus voisin à l’oreille Ce chef souffle un mot.

Ce mot va à la ronde, Résonne le long de la Seine; Le mot donné est la France, La parole: Sainte-Hélène.

C’est là la grande revue Qu’aux Champs-Élysées, A l’heure de minuit Tient César décédé.

At midnight, from his grave The drummer woke and rose, And beating loud the drum, Forth on his round he goes.

Stirred by his fleshless arms, The drumsticks patly fall, He beats the loud retreat, Réveille, and roll-call.

So strangely rolls that drum, So deep it echoes round! Old soldiers in their graves Start to live at the sound.

Both they in farthest north, Stiff in the ice that lay, And who too warm repose Beneath Italian clay.

Below the mud of Nile, And ’neath Arabian sand; Their burial-place they quit, And soon to arms they stand.

And at midnight, from his grave The trumpeter arose; And mounted on his horse, A loud shrill blast he blows.

On aery coursers then The cavalry are seen, Old squadrons erst renown’d, Gory and gash’d, I ween.

Beneath the casque their blanchèd skulls, Smile grim, and proud their air As in their bony hands Their long sharp swords they bear.

And at midnight, from his tomb The chief awoke and rose; And followed by his staff, With slow steps on he goes.

A little hat he wears, A coat quite plain has he, A little sword for arms, At his left side hangs free.

O’er the vast plain the moon A paly lustre threw; The man with the little hat The troops goes to review.

The ranks present their arms, Deep roll the drums the while, Recovering then, the troops Before the chief defile.

Captains and gen’rals round In circle form’d appear; The chief to the first a word Then whispers in his ear.

The word goes round the ranks, Resounds along the Seine; That word they give is—France, The answer—Sainte-Hélène.

’Tis there, at midnight hour, The grand review, they say, Is by dead Cæsar held, In the Champs-Élysées.

VI

The Bourbons—Mdlle. Félicie de Fauveau and her vow—Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon—A buried treasure—Madame du Barry and her bankers—Her lost jewels—A possibility of existence at some bank—Her destroyers—Zamor and the Englishman Grieve—Mrs. Atkyns and the Dauphin—Her gallant effort to save the Queen—Naundorff—An American Dauphin—Eleazar Williams— Mystery surrounding the death of Louis XVII.

It is curious how, in spite of their manifold follies and shortcomings—which were sometimes almost criminal—the Bourbons managed to inspire certain of their adherents with an almost fanatical devotion. Many and many a brave man sacrificed life and property for the ancient Royal line of France. Of this stamp were the gallant Vicomte de Frotté, shot by Napoleon in 1811, and the Marquise de la Rouérie, the organiser and leader of the Chouan revolt. It is, indeed, almost impossible to conceive the intense loyalty displayed by those Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who cherished the traditions of the old régime.

In 1842 I knew at Florence a lady—Mademoiselle Félicie de Fauveau, a sculptress of some note—who belonged to a noble French family. At that time somewhat advanced in years, she had been much with the Duchesse de Berri, and still remained a devoted supporter of the ancient monarchy. To such an extent indeed was this the case that, inspired by a feeling of the most ardent loyalty, Mademoiselle de Fauveau had made a vow never to let her hair grow till the Comte de Chambord should as Henry V. ascend the throne of France, and this resolution she carried out with an utter disregard of the graces. The Comte de Chambord never reigned, and therefore to the end of her life she kept her head closely cropped. I very well remember seeing him at Vicenza in the same year as I met Mademoiselle de Fauveau. He was not at all a remarkable-looking man, and walked with a slight limp, the consequence of an accident which had occurred to him as a young man, when his horse had fallen upon him. As a matter of fact the fracture which he had sustained would have left no traces had the doctors in attendance shown any great surgical capacity. This, however, they did not do, allowing their patient to travel in a carriage over bad roads before the fracture had been thoroughly reduced. Dr. Récamier, it may be added, had especially warned them against allowing such a thing, but no notice was taken of his letter.

The Comte de Chambord was far more high-minded than most of his line, and it was always said that had he chosen to abandon some of his convictions he would certainly have been King of France. His attitude, however, was always straightforward, and for this reason it is in all probability that he lies, the last of the Bourbons, uncrowned in his tomb at Frohsdorf.

I still possess a sketch of Mademoiselle de Fauveau standing with her hand on a favourite dog, which was drawn by my dear governess, Miss Redgrave, from a full-length statuette which the sculptress herself had modelled. The dress, oddly enough, is almost exactly similar to a tailor-made costume of to-day; but in 1842 it was considered a very great eccentricity, and used, I recollect, to excite almost as much astonishment as the lady’s cropped head. Nevertheless, Mademoiselle de Fauveau was a very dignified figure, her face, curiously enough, bearing a considerable resemblance both in feature and expression to the martyred Queen whose memory she adored.

Though it is now a hundred and fourteen years since Marie Antoinette mounted the scaffold and became the victim of a crime which, according even to Napoleon, was far worse than regicide, the very mention of her name evokes as great a feeling of sympathetic compassion as it did at the time of her brutal execution. No one who has studied the story of the terrible persecution and mental torture to which she was subjected can fail to be moved by the sufferings of this royal martyr, whose dignified bearing in some measure actually impressed the howling mob which shouted for her blood. The progress of the unfortunate Queen to the place of execution was an awful one, for the squalid cart in which she was placed was escorted by a band of furies, whose raucous howls and ignoble jests disgusted even the rough soldiery who guarded the august prisoner’s road to death. As the tumbril, it is said, passed the church of Saint Roch a band of wretches seated on the steps actually clapped their hands as if at a circus; the only open expression of sympathy, indeed, came fitly enough from a little child, which, as the rueful procession wended its way past the Oratoire, rose to its feet and kissed its little hands to the poor Queen, a last message of love, as it were, from the true heart of France.

When one thinks of the respectful affection, amounting almost to adoration, which Marie Antoinette inspired in men like Fersen, the Chevalier de Rougeville, and others, it would seem that there hung about her graceful personality an atmosphere of mesmeric fascination, something of which still seems to linger in certain places closely connected with her romantic memory. Notably is this the case at the Petit Trianon, where she must always remain almost a living figure to the visitor of any imagination. Strolling through the beautiful grounds on a fine spring day, the graceful trees bathed in a golden light, one well imagines the beautiful Queen surrounded by her children and friends wending her way to her _hameau_, the toy village in which she took so much interest and delight.

To this lovely retreat, when the leaves were beginning to fall and the lilies of France to fade came the news of the arrival at Versailles of the crowd of Parisian rabble, who on the 5th of October 1789 invaded that stately palace. The same day Marie Antoinette decided to join the King, and flying to his side, abandoned for ever her beautiful Trianon, the enchanting spot in which some of the happiest days of her life had been passed, and which she was never to see again.

From that moment nothing but sorrow and misfortune were to be her lot. Versailles was in a turmoil, and on her arrival there she soon found that her life itself was in danger. Oh the following day (6th October), she spent some terrible hours at the windows of the room known as the bedroom of Louis XV., to which she had been forced to fly from her own private apartments, whilst the crowd without the palace savagely called for her blood. Only did its fury abate when both she and the King, appearing on the balcony of an adjoining apartment, promised to set out forthwith for Paris and to take up their residence at the Tuileries.

A mysterious legend has always declared that before taking their departure the Royal couple caused a considerable sum of money, together with many valuables, to be secretly buried in the park adjoining the palace, but though careful search has often been made nothing has hitherto come to light. At the present time, however (April 1907), there is a rumour that, owing to the discovery of an old manuscript indicating the place of concealment, the authorities in charge of the palace of Versailles are on the point of discovering the exact locality of this long-hidden treasure. It is much to be hoped that such a report should prove true, for in all probability, in addition to the financial and artistic value of such a discovery, some documents of the highest historical interest are almost certain once more to be brought to the light of day.

There must, undoubtedly, be much treasure and many jewels buried during the great Revolution still lying hidden under the soil of France, for before going into exile numbers of _emigrés_ buried their most valuable possessions in the earth, with the intention of recovering them on that return which in many cases was never to take place. A great portion of the splendid jewellery of Madame du Barry has never been satisfactorily accounted for, though it has often been declared that it still remains intact and untouched in an unopened case lying in the strong-room of Coutts’ Bank. Be this as it may, I believe that it is an absolute fact that, this famous firm of bankers are still the guardians of a large number of cases deposited there by French _emigrés_, who having returned to France in order to forward the Royalist cause, met their death without having left any instructions as to the disposal of their property lodged in England. The rule, I believe, in such cases is for the bank to allow the boxes literally to moulder to pieces, carefully wrapping up in paper any objects which may fall out, and replacing them in a heap on the top of what is left. It seems a pity that no Act of Parliament should ever have been passed to deal with such cases, for there are probably many priceless works of art slowly drifting to utter decay in these old brass-bound chests fast mouldering into dust.

Though, as has been said, a legend declares that some of the jewels of Madame du Barry still lie in the strong-room of Coutts’ Bank, it is difficult to see how such can be the case unless she deposited her valuables with more than one London banker; for it is absolutely certain that the firm with whom she usually banked when in England was that of Messrs. Hammersley and Morland of Pall Mall, in whose keeping, according to her own estimate, she at one time had over 300,000 livres’ worth of diamonds. The firm in question has long ceased to exist, and I do not know who took over their business. At the end of 1794, after the death of Madame du Barry, diamonds left by her in England were sold by order of the Court of Chancery, and realised 13,300 guineas.

As is well known, this poor woman was literally hounded to death by an Englishman, George Grieve by name; he was a native of Alnwick, in Northumberland, where he early in life distinguished himself by his Radical proclivities. Having squandered the patrimony bequeathed to him by his father, an attorney of some local standing, he went to America in 1780, where, it is said, he met Washington, Franklin, and other lights of the young American Republic. In 1783 he came to Paris, in which city he appears to have posed, perhaps with authority, as an American representative in the revolutionary demonstrations which were already beginning to agitate the French. Later on, grandiloquently styling himself, “Factieux et anarchiste de premier ordre et désorganisateur du despotisme dans les deux hémisphères depuis vingt ans”—a title, by the way, which might be recommended to the consideration of some of our modern socialists—Grieve took advantage of Madame du Barry’s absence in London in 1792 (to which city she had gone to look after her stolen diamonds) to take up his residence at Louveciennes, where she possessed a splendid residence, and where she was adored by the peasantry, to whom she ever dispensed a truly regal charity. By bribery and persuasion this apostle of progress gained over two of her servants, and then, managing to obtain an order for seals to be placed on her papers and valuables, installed himself in her house whilst procuring its mistress’s arrest on her return to France. The villagers, however, mindful of the goodness of their Lady Bountiful, petitioned for and obtained her release. Grieve, no doubt desiring that his own very doubtful dealings with the contents of her château should not be exposed, again managed to get her arrested, but, as on the previous occasion, a petition of the inhabitants of Louveciennes once more set her free. In November 1793, the wretch, who was quite determined not to be balked of his prey, finally ran his unfortunate quarry to ground, and was successful in getting the favourite of Louis XV. tried and led to the guillotine. Her persecutor, unlike many of his fellow-benefactors of humanity, contrived to survive the Terror, and died peacefully in Brussels in 1809, having in the interval once more made a journey to America, where he published a translation of Chastellux’s travels.

It is curious to learn that Grieve, who was evidently full of Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, had the effrontery to make a personal appeal to the Convention, in which he demanded the head of the Du Barry “in the name of good morals.” The real truth of course being, as has been said, that this scoundrel (who had obtained permission to make an inventory of her valuables, which he drew up absolutely alone, entrance to her residence at Louveciennes being closed to all but him) had made away with much of her money and jewellery, and was in consequence determined to have their unfortunate owner sent to another world in order that his own defalcations might evade detection. In all probability he buried a certain amount of treasure in the grounds of Madame du Barry’s house; at all events local rumour has always declared that gold and jewels lie hidden in the earth there. Many searches have been made, but no valuables discovered. A skull, however,—in all probability that of the Due de Cossé-Brissac, the Royal favourite’s last lover,—was dug up near the house. Brissac having been hacked to pieces at Versailles, some youths got hold of the head, and in high glee carried it on a dung-fork to Louveciennes, where they hurled it through the open windows of the Du Barry’s salon.