Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (50 page)

After the Tilsit summit Napoleon returned to Paris. Marie, who had expected Count Walewksi to demand a divorce when she came home from Schloss Finckenstein, waited for a summons to join her lover. To save face, Anastase had made sure not to be there when his wife arrived; he had left their son with Marie’s mother in Kiernozia and then took off for a spa cure. All that Marie received from Napoleon were endearing notes from the emperor addressing her as his “little patriot.” “The thought of you is always in my heart and your name is often on my lips,” he assured her. Finally, around Christmas 1807, she was asked to join the emperor in Paris in February.

Marshal Duroc rented a town home at 2 rue de la Houssaye for the twenty-one-year-old Marie; he even staffed it for her. The sartorially picky Napoleon wished his
maîtresse en titre
to be glamorously attired. Marie was outfitted by the finicky Parisian couturier Leroy, who even provided her with hair and makeup stylists.

Unfortunately, His Imperial Majesty had little time for her, and the countess found herself squired about the French capital instead by the tall, elegant Duroc. Nor would Napoleon have much of an opportunity for romance for the next several months; his war with Spain had been going so poorly that he had to head to the front himself. With her lover absent, Paris held no allure for Marie, and she returned to Poland.

She would not see the emperor again until July 11, 1809, arriving in Vienna (which had capitulated to the French) four days after Napoleon defeated the Austrians at Wagram. He had set up headquarters at the Hapsburg summer palace of Schönbrunn and sent her a letter insisting, “I want to give you new proofs of the warm affection I have for you…. Many tender kisses on your lovely hands and just one on your beautiful mouth. Napole.”

The emperor was now thirty-nine, stouter and grayer than when they’d parted sixteen months earlier, and his skin had a pallid cast to it, but Marie’s presence in Vienna seemed to take years off him. She
was set up in a house in suburban Mödling, but after her carriage overturned one day, Napoleon sought excuses to keep her with him at Schönbrunn as often as possible.

Aware that Marie was canoodling in Austria with her husband, back in Paris, Josephine was still holding her breath and crossing her fingers, always anxious for news as to whether the countess was pregnant.

And then it finally happened

Marie realized she was enceinte in September, and Napoleon was over the moon with joy; this was the confirmation he had been seeking that he wasn’t sterile, and he was one hundred percent positive that the child she carried was his. According to Constant, “I could not even begin to describe the loving care the Emperor lavished on Madame W., now he knew she was pregnant…. He was reluctant to let her out of his sight, even for a short time.”

“I belong to him now,” Marie told the emperor’s valet, “my thoughts, my inspiration, all come from him and return to him…always.”

Napoleon’s doctor had suggested that she return to Paris with His Imperial Majesty, and Marie was eager to be near the father of her child, although it had already been some time since she had seen Count Walewski and their son, Anthony. Anastase’s reaction to his wife’s condition has not survived, but she was clearly thinking of a future with Napoleon that did not include him. She was secretly delighted to hear that her lover had given orders to wall up the private staircase connecting his rooms to Josephine’s and that he intended to commence divorce proceedings as soon as he reached Paris.

During these early months of her pregnancy it surely did not occur to her that her fertile womb would end up merely a test case. She may have proven Napoleon’s virility, but ultimately she only provided him with the final impetus to definitively break from Josephine and set about siring the dynasty he’d always dreamed of.

“Yes, I am in love [with Marie],” Bonaparte admitted to his brother Lucien, “but always subordinate to my policy. And though I would like to crown my mistress, I must look for ways to further the interests of France.” Keeping his intentions from Countess Walewska,
he secretly began scouting for potential brides. “I want to marry a womb. It matters not what she looks like, as long as she comes from royal stock.”

This declaration obviously placed Marie, with child or not, out of the running.

Cheerfully increasing, she left for Paris in mid-October, blissfully oblivious of Napoleon’s plans—except perhaps, for the prescient inscription on a ring she gave him entwined with strands of her golden hair. The engraving read,
“When you cease to love me, remember that I love you still
.”

Napoleon was at Fontainebleau, too busy to see her; unbeknownst to her, he was wife shopping. At the top of his list of empress replacements (though he had yet to divorce Josephine) was Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna, the fourteen-year-old sister of the Russian tsar. To sweeten the deal, he was prepared to offer Alexander…Poland!

Marshal Duroc gently confirmed Marie’s fears; yes, it was true that her lover intended to make a dynastic marriage. Realizing that the presence of his pregnant
maîtresse en titre
presented an embarrassment to a man seeking to remarry, the countess quietly returned to her homeland. Ironically, the miracle of conceiving a child together, which under ordinary circumstances would more closely bond a couple, sundered their liaison and cost Marie the emperor’s love.

Much as Tsar Alexander would have liked to have annexed Poland, Anna Pavlovna was taken off the marriage market by their mother, who not only disliked the parvenu Napoleon, but thought her daughter far too young to wed. Anna would have to wait two years before any thoughts of marriage could be entertained. Napoleon couldn’t wait
three
years for an heir, so he set his sights elsewhere. On April 2, 1810, he married Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, the daughter of the deposed Hapsburg emperor Francis II.

Napoleon kept in touch with Marie Walewska, inquiring after her health and encouraging her to “chase away the black thoughts—you must not worry about the future.” But if she had any hope of resuming their love affair, he quashed it by addressing her formally as “madame,” confirming his intention to put more than geographical distance between them.

With the future of her child on his mind, Bonaparte asked his
minister in Warsaw to urge Count Walewski to grant “a personal request from the Emperor” by giving Marie’s unborn child his name. Appropriately flattered, the seventy-three-year-old Anastase invited his wife to return to his home in Walewice so they could all be a family again. On May 4, 1810, she gave birth to Napoleon’s son, who was christened Alexander-Florian-Joseph Colonna Walewski. Throughout his life, although he may have learned otherwise, Alexander insisted that the old count was his biological father. At the very least, in so doing, he publicly preserved his mother’s dignity.

In September 1810, Napoleon invited the Walewski family to join him at Schönbrunn.

Marie was presented at court in November. Napoleon had her town home in Paris redecorated in the latest Empire decor and purchased a country villa for her near Boulogne, not far from the palace of Saint-Cloud. Now twenty-three and at the height of her beauty, Marie would have preferred to rekindle her royal romance, but it was not to be. Napoleon was intent on remaining faithful to his new (and now pregnant) empress, who was wildly envious of any woman ever connected with her husband. Countess Walewska would have to content herself with remaining His Imperial Majesty’s good friend. However, Napoleon awarded Marie an annuity of ten thousand francs from the Privy Purse.

During 1811–1812, she became a leading light of Parisian society, and her home on the rue de la Houssaye was a haven for Polish expatriates and tourists as well as the crème de la crème of the French
haut ton
, including Napoleon’s sisters, who liked Marie and admired her honesty and modesty.

Marie’s old friend Anna Potocka, who was also living in Paris at the time, observed, “Madame Walewska has become an accomplished woman of the world. She possesses rare tact and an unerring feel of proprieties. She has acquired self-assurance but has remained discreet, a combination not easily arrived at in her sensitive situation. Conscious of Marie-Louise’s jealousy, she somehow managed to conduct her social life in such a way that, even in this gossipy capital, few suspect that she still remains in close touch with the emperor. It does not surprise me at all that she is the only one of his loves that so far has survived the test of time and of the Emperor’s recent marriage.”

One day, during her sojourn in Paris, Marie brought their son to see Napoleon in his study at the Tuileries Palace. The emperor would develop no ongoing relationship with Alexander, but he was far from a deadbeat dad. “Don’t worry about the little boy. He is a child of Wagram and one day he will become King of Poland,” Napoleon told one of Count Walewski’s nieces.

It had to have been little more than empty badinage, but Marie found reassurance in his words. Napoleon’s hyperbole was never manifested, but he did provide most specifically and generously for Alexander’s future and for Marie’s welfare as well. During the spring of 1812, war with Russia seemed inevitable. Their alliance had proven disastrous for the Russian economy, as the enforced blockade of England prohibited them from importing affordable goods from Britain. Additionally, some of the progressive ideas that were part and parcel of the Napoleonic Code (vis-à-vis civil rights and divorce laws, just to name two) had seeped across the Polish border into Russia. These radical reforms angered the Russian boyars, and the nobles threatened Tsar Alexander with his father’s fate (assassination) if he didn’t do something about it.

Recognizing that he might not survive another military campaign, Napoleon wanted to make sure that his son by Marie would be fully provided for. In her presence, on May 5 at Saint-Cloud he signed a twelve-clause legal document agreeing to set aside a substantial legacy for her and young Alexander. The boy would inherit sixty-nine farms in Naples that would yield an annual income of approximately 170,000 francs. Until he came of age, the money would be Marie’s to spend as she wished. After Alexander reached his majority and assumed the inheritance, he was to pay his mother 50,000 francs a year from it. The estates were to be entailed to his male descendants, and Napoleon made contingencies should the boy die without issue. In June, he signed letters patent creating Alexander Walewski a hereditary Count of the Empire. His coat of arms combined the crests of the Walewskis and Marie’s family, the Łasczyńskis.

At the end of the month, although the war had already begun, Marie left her family in Paris and returned to Poland. Her intention was to demand a divorce from Anastase Walewski, and her rationale
was not emotional, but economic. Thanks to the Napoleonic Code, Poland’s new laws rendered a wife equally responsible for her husband’s debts, and the count’s property was hemorrhaging them. If she were compelled to pay off Anastase’s encumbrances, the only money she had was Alexander’s inheritance.

Count Walewski was not pleased by this turn of events. He agreed to the divorce only on the proviso that Marie assumed the support of
their
son, Anthony, and set up a trust fund for him from their marriage settlement. Although the count was nearly senile by then, he was lucid enough to know what he was signing—a document attesting to the fact that Marie had been coerced into marrying him when she was not only underage, but ill, and therefore presumably not in a coherent frame of mind to make a sound decision about her future. This was a fiction, since Marie had recovered from her hysterical ailment by the time the church bells were rung. She was also seventeen on her wedding day, which took place in 1804, and not in 1803, as the paper falsely stated.

Anastase also set his signature to a second document confirming that he’d had an understanding with Marie that absolved her from marital fidelity. Since he had practically pushed her into Napoleon’s arms back in 1807, at least this was more or less true. This paper was intended to buff away the adulterous tarnish from Marie’s honor.

Six weeks after the documents were submitted to the Polish law courts, the Walewskis’ marriage was sundered.

After the Grande Armée’s devastating defeat in Russia, as the enemy advanced on Warsaw, Marie received instructions to leave immediately for Paris, to prevent the possibility that Napoleon’s former mistress might be taken as a prisoner of war and her captivity used as a bargaining chip. Countess Walewska’s last act as a Polish patriot was to grant the severely wounded war minister Prince Joseph Poniatowski a substantial advance from Alexander’s inheritance to be used for reoutfitting the decimated Polish army. Fewer than one thousand of the forty thousand troops who had begun the disastrous Russian campaign had returned home. Poniatowski was killed at the Battle of Leipzig on October 14, 1813; years later his estate repaid Marie’s loan.

After Leipzig, Napoleon’s empire began to crumble. Alexander Walewski’s inheritance in Naples was now in jeopardy. Napoleon summoned Marie to discuss an alternate financial arrangement. In January 1814, he purchased a Parisian villa for his son at what is now 48 rue de la Victoire and prepared a document awarding the boy an income of fifty thousand francs derived from his personal property and gilt shares.

Napoleon departed Paris for the front on January 25. Writing to one of her frequent chaperones, his Corsican cousin and aide-de-camp General Philippe Antoine d’Ornano, Marie said, “The Emperor left this morning. I did not have a chance to say goodbye to him…. I wonder whether he noticed…my nerves are in a very bad state.” Her intuition told her that his luck was running out.

Napoleon was compelled to abdicate on April 11, 1814, signing the treaty at Fontainebleau renouncing his empire in exchange for exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. Three days later, Marie secretly visited him at the château, conducted straight to his library door by the ever-discreet Constant. She did not know that on the night before her arrival, Napoleon had tried to kill himself with a mixture of opium, belladonna, and white hellebore, but the poison, which he had carried on his person throughout the Russian campaign, must have lost some of its potency, because it only gave him a case of violent cramps and vomiting.