Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 15 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 37 of 60 (61%)
June, and stayed there with her daughter Pauline until Napoleon had
sailed for France. On 2d March 1814 she went from Elba to San Vicenzo
near Leghorn, and then to Rome. Her son sent a frigate for her, the
'Melpomene', which was captured by the English 'Rivoli'; another vessel,
the 'Dryade', brought her to France, and she joined Napoleon in Paris.
We must have a regard for this simple old lady, who was always careful
and saving, only half believing in the stability of the Empire; and,
like a true mother, always most attentive to the most unfortunate of her
children. Her life had been full of startling changes; and it must have
been strange for the woman who had been hunted out of Corsica, flying
from her house just in time to save her life from the adherents of Paoli,
to find herself in grandeur in Paris. She saw her son just before he
left, as she thought, for America, and then retired to the Rinuccini--now
the Bonaparte-Palace at Rome, where she died in 1836. She had been
anxious to join Napoleon at St. Helena, and had refused, as long as
Napoleon was alive, to forgive her daughter Caroline, the wife of Murat,
for her abandonment of her brother. She was buried at Albano.

Letitia's youngest daughter, the beautiful but frail Pauline, Duchess of
Guastalla, married first to General Leclerc, and then to Prince Camille
Borglle, was at Nice when her brother abdicated in 1814. She retired
with her mother to Rome, and in October 1814 went to Elba, staying there
till Napoleon left, except when she was sent to Naples with a message of
forgiveness for Murat There was a characteristic scene between her and
Colonel Campbell when the English Commissioner arrived to find Napoleon
gone. Pauline professed ignorance till the last of her brother's
intentions, and pressed the Colonel's hand to her heart that lie might
feel how agitated she was. "She did not appear to be so," says the
battered old Colonel, who seems to have been proof against her charms.
She then went to Rome, and later to Pisa. Her health was failing, and,
DigitalOcean Referral Badge