The Court of the Empress Josephine by Imbert de Saint-Amand, Arthur Léon, baron, 1834-1900, Perry, Thomas Sergeant

Amid all these manifestations of devotion and delight, the members of the Imperial family alone, who should have been the most satisfied, and certainly the most astonished by their greatness, wore an anxious, almost a grieved look. They alone appeared discontented with their master. Their pride knew no bounds; their irritability was extreme. Nothing seemed good enough, for them. In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new Princes of the blood. Of Napoleon's four brothers, two were absent and on bad terms with him: Lucien, on account of his marriage with Madame Jouberton; Jerome, on account of his marriage with Miss Paterson. His mother, Madame Letitia Bonaparte, an able woman, who combined great courage with uncommon good sense, had not lost her head over the wonderful good fortune of the modern Caesar. Having a presentiment that all this could not last, she economized from motives of prudence, not of avarice. While the courtiers were celebrating the Emperor's new triumphs, she lingered in Rome with her son Lucien, whom she had followed in his voluntary exile, having pronounced in his favor in his quarrel with Napoleon. As for Joseph and Louis, who, with their wives, had been raised to the dignity of Grand Elector and Constable, respectively, one might think that they were overburdened with wealth and honors, and would be perfectly satisfied. But not at all! They were indignant that they were not personally mentioned, in the _plebiscite_, by which their posterity was appointed to succeed to the French crown. This _plebiscite_ ran thus: "The French people desire the Inheritance of the Imperial dignity in the direct, natural, or adoptive line of descent from Napoleon Bonaparte, and in the direct, natural, legitimate line of descent from Joseph Bonaparte and from Louis Bonaparte, as is determined by the organic _senatus-consultum_ of the twenty-eighth Floreal, year XII." For the Emperor's family, these stipulations were the cause of incessant squabbles and recriminations. Lucien and Jerome regarded their exclusion as an act of injustice. Joseph and Louis asked indignantly why their descendants were mentioned when they themselves were excluded. They were very jealous of Josephine, and of her son, Eugene de Beauharnais, and much annoyed by the Emperor's reservation of the right of adoption, which threatened them and held out hopes for Eugene. Louis Bonaparte, indignant with the slanderous story, according to which his wife, Hortense, had been Napoleon's mistress, treated her ill, and conceived a dislike for his own son, who was reported to be that of the Emperor. As for Elisa Bacciochi, Caroline Murat, and Pauline Borghese, they could not endure the mortification of being placed below the Empress, their sister-in-law, and the thought that they had not yet been given the title of Princesses of the blood, which had been granted to the wife of Joseph and the wife of Louis, filled them with actual despair.