CHAPTER VII

The Duc de Reichstadt at Schönbrünn--Progress of his disease--The Archduchess Sophia--The prince's last moments--His death--Effect produced by the news at Paris--Article of the _Constitutionnel_ upon this event

The Duc de Reichstadt's stay at Schönbrünn was favourable to his health. The prince went on horseback daily to the great manœuvres, but with the commander-general; this was the emperor's expedient for saving his grandson from using his voice and tiring his lungs. Once only, when the emperor was present at the review, the duke urged to be allowed to take the command of his battalion and obtained leave to do so.

The hunting season came, and the emperor expressed a desire that his grandson should not be exposed to the fatigue of long chases and to the inclemency of the chilly autumn days; but the Duc de Reichstadt insisted and followed the hounds. At the second he was obliged to return without being present at the "gone away," and the old symptoms again appeared. These were an irritating cough, principally from the trachea and bronchial tubes; weakness, which led to constant desire to sleep; and dyscrasia of the whole cutaneous system. Henceforward Dr. Malfatti advised the prince most carefully to avoid all efforts of any nature, and principally those of the vocal organs. This advice meant a complete breaking off of all the prince's military habits; so he hid his sufferings as much as possible, and had, at least, strength of will enough not to show it if he could not prevent being ill. Several times the duke urged the emperor to let him take up his military service again, but the emperor always opposed it. Three important men died at Vienna towards the end of the year: Comte de Giulay, Baron de Frémont and Baron de Siegenthal. The young prince, who for some days had pretended to be much better, begged the emperor's leave to follow Baron de Frémont's funeral cortège with the troops. The Emperor yielded, and a fresh indisposition was the result of this condescension. Finally, for the last time--it was at General de Siegenthal's funeral service--the prince appeared with his troops on the place Joseph. The temperature was very cold; in the middle of the commands he was giving to his battalion he lost his voice. When he returned home he felt ill enough to allow the doctor to be called in, and confessed that he had gone out that morning when he was in a high state of feverishness. It was found to be rheumatic, bilious and catarrhal fever, and soon took an acute form; it reached its crisis on the seventh day, after which it passed from the nature of sub-continuous fever to that of intermittent quotidian fever. Dr. Malfatti decreed that, as soon as the season allowed, the prince should go to the waters of Ischl. At last, once more, they succeeded in arresting the fever; but fresh imprudent actions revived the disease.

"It seemed," said the doctor, in despair, "as though this unfortunate young man was possessed of a fatal obsession, which compelled him towards suicide!"

The spring was still more disastrous to the invalid than the winter had been; it was impossible to stop him from going out. Overtaken two or three times by rain, he was taken with shivering fits, which led to fever and congestion of the liver.

In the month of April his pulse quickened, shiverings came on and he grew visibly thinner and thinner. Drs. Raiman and Vichrer, who were called in to take the place of Dr. Malfatti, who was ill with gout, were frightened: in concert with the prince's ordinary physician, they prescribed baths of soup: the wasting away on account of the failure of the digestive powers compelled them to this method, which was to feed the invalid by means of absorption. Again signs of improvement showed themselves, and after a while the duke was well enough for the emperor to allow him, on the advice of the doctors, to take the air on horseback and in a carriage, but only on condition these exercises should be indulged in most moderately. He submitted to these orders for some days; then, having persisted in going out in cold and damp weather, he was tempted by the invigorating air to put his horse to the gallop instead of returning home. That same night, when he should have gone to bed and kept warm, he drove to the Prater in an open carriage. The Prater is situated on an island in the Danube, and is extremely damp; but that did not prevent the prince from staying there until after sunset. This imprudence resulted in such weakness on his return that, when a wheel of his carriage broke and he sprang out on the road, he had not strength enough to hold himself up and fell on his knees. Next day inflammation of the lungs set in, and the prince became deaf with the left ear. The situation was so serious that Dr. Malfatti asked that Drs. Vivenot, Vichrer and Turcken might be called in for consultation. He was charged from the emperor to tell them that, without troubling themselves about political considerations, which until then had restricted the Duc de Reichstadt's journeying to Austria, they might order him a voyage to any country which they might deem suitable to restore his health, except France. They prescribed a journey to Italy and a stay at Naples. The invalid could not believe such a favour had been granted him, and sent Dr. Malfatti to M. de Metternich to make certain from the lips of the minister that no embargo would be put upon his travels.

"Tell the prince," replied M. de Metternich, "that with the exception of France, the gates of which it does not depend on me to open, he can go into whatever country he likes, the emperor putting the restoration of his grandson's health before all other considerations."

The invalid had cause for fear: soon he grew so weak that there could not even reasonably be any question of travelling for him. They informed the Archduchess Marie-Louise of the state of her son, and told him that the moment for receiving the viaticum had come.

The etiquette of the Court of Vienna decreed that the princes of the Imperial family should take part in this sad ceremony in the presence of the whole Court. No one dared speak of it to the duke, not even Michel Wagner, the palace chaplain, who had been his religious director in his youth, so strict a matter was it at the Court of Vienna. A woman it was who undertook both to warn the invalid, and also to put the news in a form which should hide part of the horrible truth from the prince. This woman was the Archduchess Sophia.

She told the prince that, as she was soon going to communicate, she wished to do so by his bedside, in hope that her prayers to heaven for his cure might be more efficacious when made during the mysterious act of the Eucharist; and she begged the sick man to take the sacrament at the same time as she did, so that their prayers might go up to heaven together.

The Duc de Reichstadt acceded.

It can be imagined how profound was the meditation and how sad the ceremony. The prince prayed for the safe delivery of the Archduchess Sophia, who was near her accouchement; she prayed for the cure of the Duc de Reichstadt, who was near his death! The invalid, who was then at Vienna, desired to be moved to Schönbrünn, and the return of spring having warmed the air the doctor supported the prince's wish. The removal took place without serious accident, and the prince even seemed a little better after it. Unfortunately, one day, in spite of all the entreaties that could be made to prevent him, he wanted to drive to Laxenbourg, two leagues from Schönbrünn, and in an open carriage. He stayed out an hour, and received the respectful greeting of the officers, talked much, and came back through a violent storm. During the night following this day of imprudent acts he was seized by a feverish attack, accompanied with a burning thirst; obstinate coughing brought on expectoration, almost a vomiting of blood, and, for the first time, the prince complained of sharp pain in his side.

A fresh consultation was held, and the doctors looked upon the invalid's condition as hopeless.

The Archduchess Marie-Louise arrived. She had passed through Trieste in order to see the emperor, who was there at the time; she there fell ill herself, and had been obliged to stay for fifteen long days. Still ill, her anxiety, however, overcame her weakness. She continued her journey, and arrived on the evening of 24 June. The prince wished to go to his mother, but at the first attempt at locomotion he realised his strength was inadequate. Nevertheless the joy of seeing his mother once more had a happy effect upon him; there had been a sensible improvement in the disease for the last three weeks, at any rate there was an arrest of the malady; the fever lessened, the nights passed over without very great perspirations, and the prince could lie on either side without pain. But the crafty and deceptive course of disease of the lungs is well known, usually fastening upon young and vigorous constitutions who do not want to die; the disease seems at times, like the invalid himself, to have need of rest and to stop fatigued; but nearly always this moment of stoppage is made use of by the direful miner to dig a fresh sap, and the subterranean work is revealed suddenly by fresh symptoms, which show that, during the feigned halt, the disease has made cruel progress. The heat had become very great and the fever redoubled its efforts; the cough became more obstinate than ever; a second hæmorrhage happened, and the prince threw up blood in quantity.

The population of Vienna took a very lively interest in the fate of this unhappy lad; they stopped any one in the streets whom they knew belonged to his household; from all parts letters arrived pointing out remedies. These innocent empirics at least showed anxious sympathy, though they were deficient in scientific knowledge.

A terrible storm broke out during the night of 27 June; one of those storms which the pride of kings believed to have been let loose by the hand of the Lord because of them; the lightning struck one of the eagles on the palace of Schönbrünn. From this time the people's opinion coincided with that of the doctors, and they gave up hope. As the lightning had struck an eagle, the son of Napoleon was going to die. The prince went out no more; only when the fighting for breath, which was almost continuous, made him think that he would find some relief in the outer air, did they carry him out on the balcony. Soon it was impossible for him to leave his bed; at the least movement of his body he fainted away. Then he began to talk of his approaching death, and to show the distaste he had always had for an existence which had opened out with a vast horizon, whilst fate had forced him to vegetate in a narrow circle. Was it actual disgust with life, or was it a desire to comfort those around him? Only on 21 July did he confess that he was suffering dreadfully, and murmured several times, "O my God! my God! when shall I die?"

His mother entered when one of these outcries was escaping him, and he at once repressed the expression of pain which had spread over his face, received her with a smile and, to her questions about his health, replied that he was doing well, and made plans with her for the journey to the north of Italy. That evening Dr. Malfatti announced that he feared a mortal crisis would take place during the night; Baron de Moll watched in a neighbouring room, unknown to the prince, who had never allowed any one to sit up with him. About one o'clock in the morning he seemed to be dozing; but at half-past three he sat up suddenly, and, after violent and vain efforts for breath, he exclaimed--

"_Mutter! mutter! ich gehe unter!_" ("Mother! mother! I am dying!")

At this cry the Baron de Moll and the valet de chambre entered and seized him in their arms, trying to quieten him; but he was battling with death.

"_Mutter! mutter!_" he repeated.

Then he fell back. He had not expired, but he was in that twilight state which separates life from death. They hastened to tell the Archduchess Marie-Louise and the Archduke François, in whose arms the Duc de Reichstadt had expressed a desire to die. All the princes came hurriedly; Marie-Louise had not strength to stand, nor even to reach him; she fell on her knees and crawled the few steps between herself and her son. The sick man could not speak any more; but his nearly-closed eyes could still settle on his mother, and he showed her by a look that he recognised her. Five o'clock in the morning struck; he seemed to hear the vibrations of the pendulum, and to count the strokes. Eternity had just sounded for him on the bronze! He soon made a sound of farewell; the priest who was present showed him heaven opening before him and, at eight minutes past five, without a convulsion or a struggle, without even any pain, he gave up his last sigh. He had lived for twenty-one years, four months and two days. His life had been obscure; his death made a less vivid sensation in France than might have been expected. To the French, and in the eyes of the French, the prince was an Austrian.

Our nation is a proud one; not even at the cost of its throne would it have let the Emperor Maximilian, even if he had been the Son of God, give it to his eldest son; it did not at all like such a prince to show no expression of regret, and preferred the man who, to reconquer it, made almost mad efforts, to the one who lay down quietly in resignation to the decrees of Providence.

By a singular freak of fate the Duc de Reichstadt, as we have already mentioned, died in the same bed that Napoleon, as conqueror, had slept in twice: the first time after Austerlitz, the second after Wagram! The father and son slept their last sleep in it with a space of eleven years between them, and now they slept on the bosom of their common mother--only, the ocean rolled between their two dead bodies.

Perhaps our readers will be curious to know how, after the lapse of twenty-two years, the French press appreciated this event, which contained something both fatal and providential in it, and happened at the moment when a new king was trying to found a new dynasty on the soil of France, a country ever rebellious against dynasties. The news was only known in Paris on 1 August. We will open a newspaper which we had sent for for another purpose, and we there read the article we are about to place before our readers. The paper is the _Constitutionnel;_ we do not know by whom the article is written, but it seems a good one.

"PARIS, 1 _August_

"The son of Napoleon is dead. This news, which had been long expected, has produced in Paris a sorrowful but calm sensation. So obscure an end to a life which gave promise of a splendid destiny, a pale, last ray of vast glory, such as that which has just died out, affords a melancholy subject for meditation! The people will mourn deeply and seriously, for it is in the people especially that the memories of Imperial glory have left enduring traces.

"The details of the last moments of Napoleon's son are still wanting to us; his death has been surrounded by mystery, as was his life. We are, however, assured that he saw the approach of death with a fortitude worthy of his father. When he realised that the fatal hour had come, he disposed of the few remaining worldly goods which he had left, in conformity with the wishes previously expressed by the Emperor of the French, in favour of young Louis-Napoleon, son of the ex-King of Holland, who fought in the ranks of the last defenders of Italian liberty. We understand that a letter written by the illustrious dying man to inform his cousin of the bequest contains evidence of the troubles which poisoned and, no doubt, shortened his existence.

"It must indeed have been a bitter one! Tom away from the cradle, from his country and his family, to be confined in a sumptuous prison; deprived of guidance at the age when his mind had much need of direction; submitted to tyrannical etiquette; a stranger in the midst of a Court, which beset him with doubtful loyalty, to whom could he confide if not in the watchful attendants commissioned to deceive him, perhaps to corrupt him? From whom could he obtain information of what he most wanted to know--of his fate, his future, his duties? His tutors, we are assured, left him for a long time in ignorance of his father's history! If the few friends he had been allowed to meet are to be believed, the young Napoleon had been endowed by nature with an upright mind and a generous heart; barren gifts, which only served to make his loneliness more crushing and death a welcome boon! His life has ended opportunely for the honour of the name he bore: he will not have dragged that great name through a long time of inaction; he will not have dishonoured it in the service of politics, of courts or of party intrigues; he will not have played the ridiculous and odious rôle of a pretender, and history will not have to reproach him with having been a scourge to his country.

"The young Napoleon has, in the hands of Austria, been both an object of terror to herself and a bugbear to the France of the Restoration. His name alone, uttered by M. de Metternich, would have made Louis XVIII. and Charles X. tremble, and been sufficient to repulse every attempt that was contrary to Austrian politics; and yet, prudence would never have let them realise the menace contained in such a name. Such menace would, perhaps, not have been without effect, even after the Revolution of 1830, on the statesmen who have controlled our politics, although it would not have been more serious now than at any other period.

"Austria, therefore, is delivered from her fears, and robbed of the instrument of trouble which she had at her disposal against us.

"Napoleon II. had, in France, at least, a number of partisans, if not exactly a party. It is a heritage factions will dispute over amongst themselves and with the government, a heritage which will remain to those who know best how to rally the popular masses to a sense of the true interests of the country."

The rest of the paper contained a manifesto from the English press, telegraphic despatches about Don Pedro's expedition and an analysis of _Mademoiselle de Liron_--a novel by M. E. J. Deléchuze.