LITERARY SPECTATOR.
NAPOLEON AND HIS VALETS.
M. LADVOCAT, the Comiuror of Paris, and the publisher of the numerous series of Min./area Contemporaines, has just presented the admirers of NAPOLEON with another publication, which is to be extended to several volumes, on one of their favourite subjects. We trust there is a large portion of the class of those who pur chase his books, who do not receive as gospel every thing that M. LanvocAr finds it his interest to publish in this form. That portion will probably consist of men who read these works, not so much in search of novelty, as in order to compare the different histories of the same facts. We do not think their object will be gained by the perusal of this :work, judging by as much as we have already seen of it, and considering its origin ; but, at all events, those persons who buy the work, for the sake of the chitchat of a court, may possibly be repaid for the trouble of reading it. It is just such a history as might be expected from a valet de chambre, with the corrections and additions of a speculating editor.
M. CONSTANT was the first valet de chambre of NAPOLEON, • for a period of fifteen years—that is, from the campaign of Ma rengo until his abdication at Fontainebleau ; when, according to his own account, he was separated from him much against his own inclination. It is a common saying, that no man is a hero with his valet ; but M. LADVOCAT seems to think otherwise—his hero loses nothing by being approached so near. We suppose that M. LADVOCAT has shown up his hero in so many points of view, that the subject is becoming rather threadbare, and therefore he has resorted to the valet for fresh matter. We may shortly expect the memoirs of his chef de cuisine. However, the enterprisingeditor contends that the valet de chambre of a hero, from his situation alone, becomes any thing but a valet de chambre. To use his own words, "Amber is but a piece of mere earth, and the stone of Bologna but the fragment of a rock yet the first has the perfume of the rose, and the other reflects die sun." He .therefore proves, that the character of the observer has the greater claim to respect from the importance of what passed under his nose. We should be sorry to speak disrespectfully of any great man's great man, but to us Monsieur CONSTANT appears to have been a very intelligent valet—more so than even his situation required, as far as we are able to judge of such important offices. The duty of a good servant, in our opinion, is to shut his ears and eyes against every thing that ccincerns not his own business, and to do what is required ofhim mechanically. This ha i not • been the case with Monsieur CONSTANT; we fear his Imperial Majesty's toilet had often been neglected, while the valet's mind has been occupied with state secrets. NAPOLEON was celebrated for the almost instinctive perception of the suitableness of men's characters to the situations in which he employed them. It appears his instinct, from this instance, was not infallible ; and Monsieur CONSTANT, though the son of an innkeeper, and almost uneducated, would have been better suited to the situation of an under secretary of state than that of a valet. The account of his inducements for leaving the solitude into which he had retired on quitting his master at Fontainebleau, in the shape of an author, is somewhat naive. He says, the principal occupation of his retirement consisted in reading, in the chimney-corner, with his wife and sister, the books which inundated France, concerning his f_rmer master; the greater part of which were miserable rhapsodies, incorrect, false, or calumnious ; which he amused himself with rectifying, or in proving the absurdity of thein,—though he does not tell us whether any of these miserable rhapsodies proceeded from the press of his publisher. Down comes to his hermitage M. LADVOCAT, who by some sidewind had got scent of his interesting employment, and prevails on him, after having resisted the repeated requests of his friends and acquaintance, to publish his Memoirs; of which M. LADVOCAT proposed himself to be the editor. . LADVOCAT advises him to complete the biography of the Emperor; M. BOURRIENNE, from his situation near the person of NAPOLEON, having confined himself to displaying only the political surface. These Memoirs therefore profess to be the history •of the private and retired moments of the life of NAPOLEON,--NAPOLEON, disencumbered of the warrior's sword, of the Consular purple, or of the Imperial diadem ; NAPOLEON after the council or the battle, in forgetfulness of his power and of his conquests ; NAPOLEON in his dressing-gown. Monsieur CONSTANT, previous to commencing his history, in-, yokes the confidence and respect of his readers, by declaring that after years spent in the service of the richest and most powerful sovereign in Europe, he has retired a poor man, though he might have benefited largely by the fortune he procured others by his solicitations ; and that he never employed his interest with his master, nor abused his liberality, to enrich his relations. We will not trace the origin of Monsieur CONSTANT, as he has very properly said little about it himself. It was much the same as that of ell other valets ; excepting that his parents had intended him for the church, which at that time was the receptacle of every thing that was worthless ; but after a number of reverses and transitions, during the Revolution, he finds himself, in the early part of the year 1800, in the service of his hero. Having been in the service of EUGENE DE BEAUHARNOIS, as valet, he is transferred by him to his mother, Madame JOSEPHINE BUONAPARTE; and the
• 'Unwires de Constant, Premier Valet de Chambre de PEmperear, err is Vie white de Napoleon, as Famine, et sa Cour. Paris ,l80.
First Consul taking notice of him one day at dinner, asked him, " Young man, will you follow me to the field of battle ?" The valet replied, he wished for nothing better. "Do so, then," said BUONAPARTE ; and on leaving table, he ordered the superintendent of his household to include him in the list of domestics who were to accompany him. To the great grief of the poor valet, he is, however, left behind ; but BUONAPARTE asking for him on the road, he is sent for; and he overtakes his new master at the convent of Mount St. Bernard.
The convent of Mount St. Bernard ! Here's a point de parlance ! Instead of the history of a valet de chambre, we could almost fancy we were to be treated with that of one of NAPOLEON'S Field 1VIarshals. The pen in the hand of our historian seems an implement as natural to him as his razor. BUONAPARTE for once spoiled a great man, by confining him to his toilet-table : had he transferred him to his council, who knows what effect he might not have had on the destinies of Europe, which all these LADVOCAT writers are so fond of talking about ? But let him speak for himself :— " On our road, we continually overtook the regiments on their march, officers and soldiers who were hastening to rejoin their different corps. Their enthusiasm was indescribable. Those who had made the campaign of Italy rejoiced to return to so fine a country. Those who were trangers to it burned with the desire of seeing the fields of battle immortalized
• by French valour, and by the genius of the hero who again marched at their head. They all went on their road as if to a fête; and they sang while they climbed the mountains of the Valois. It was at eight in the morning that I arrived at the Quarter-general. Pfister announced me, and I found the General-in-Chief in the lowest saloon of the Hospice. He was at breakfast with his staff. When he saw me—' Ah ! so you are here, you rogue ; why did you not come before ?' said he to me. wtave as an excuse, that I had, to my inanite regret, received a counteis Ader, or at least that I had been left behind at the moment of departure. Lose no time, friend,' added he; make haste and act ; we are going.' From this moment I was in the particular service of the First Consul, as his valet de chambre in ordinary. Soon after breakfast, we began to descend the mountain. Several persons let themselves slide down the snow, somewhat after the fashion of the Montagnes Russes in the garden of Beaujou. I followed their example. They called it sledging. The General-in-Chief also descended, in this manner, a glacier almost perpendicular. His guide was a young peasant, active and courageous ; to whom the First Consul secured a comfortable independence for the rest of his life."
M. CONSTANT has not availed himself here of a fine opportunity for the display of his gratitude towards a man who, by saving his master's neck, also saved the valet his place. BUONAPARTE was on the brink of destruction—another moment and he was gone : the peasant, with the eye of the eagle and the activity of the cha mois, darted upon the General, and dragged him from the abyss which yawned beneath him. This was a fact we should have thought worth recording ;_ but valets seldom perceive merit in persons of an inferior cast. To resume the narrative.
"Some young soldiers, who had lost themselves in the snow, had been discovered almost dead with cold by the dogs of the monks, and taken to the Hospice, where they were taken every care of, and were quickly returned to life. The First Consul gave proofs of his gratitude to the good fathers for a charity so active and so generous. Before quitting the Hospice, where tables loaded with victuals were prepared for the soldiers, he left with the holy men, in recompense for the hospitality with which he as well as his companions in arms had been received, a considerable sum of money, and an order for an annual sum for the maintenance of their convent.
"The same day we climbed the mountain Albaredo ; but as this passage was impassable for cavalry and artillery, they were sent by the town of Bard, under the batteries of the fort. The First Consul had ordered that they should pass during the night, and at full gallop; and he had had straw twisted round the wheels of the waggons, and the feet of the horses. These precautions did not entirely prevent the Austrians from hearing our troops, and the cannons of the fort never ceased pouring on them with. canister-shot. But, luckily, the houses of the town sheltered our soldiers from the fire of the enemy, and more than half the army passed thrnngh thr. tnwn without sustaining. much injury. As for the household of the First Consul, commanded by General Gardaune, to which I belonged, it went round the fort of Bard. On the 23rd of May we forded a torrent which rolled between the town and the fort, being led by the First Consul. He then climbed, followed by General Berthier and some officers, a path of the Albaredo which overlooked the fort and the town of Bard. There, with his glass pointed at the batteries of the enemy, in face of the fire, from which he was protected only by a few shrubs, he blamed the dispositions which had been made by the officer commanding the siege, and gave some fresh orders, of which the effect was to be, as he himself said, to carry the place as soon as possible, and disembarrass him from the trouble which this fort had given him, having prevented him from sleeping during the two days that he had passed at the Convent of St Maurice. He then stretched himself at the foot of an oak, and fell fast asleep, while the army continued to effect its passage. Refreshed by this short moment of repose, the First Consul redescended the mountain, continued his march, and we went to sleep at Yrree, where he intended to pass the night. The brave General Lannes, who commanded the advanced guard, was in some measure our quarter-master, taking possession by actual force of all the places which stopped the road. It was only a few hours after he had forced the passage of Yrree that we entered. "Such was this miraculous passage of the Mount Saint Bernard : horses, cannon, waggons, an immense materiel, all was dragged or carried over glaciers that appeared inaccessible, and by roads apparently impracticable, even to a single man. The cannon of the Austrians could not, any more than the snows and the ice, stop the progress of the French army; in fact, the genius and the perseverance of the First Consul had communicated itself to the very lowest of the soldiers, and had inspired them with a courage and a strength of which the results were one day to appear miraculous." This specimen contains even a touch of the sublime. Let us turn to another page, and see the valet in his natural element. "Hebert, valet de chambre in ordinary, was a young man very mild, and exceedingly timid. He bad, like all the rest of us, the most devoted affection for the First Consul. It happened one 'day, in Egypt, that the latter, who bad never been able to shave himself (it was! who afterwards taught him,,as I shall relate hereafter, with some details), had asked for Hebert in the absence of Hambart, who usually shaved him, to fulfil this office for him. As it had sometimes happened that Hebert, from his excessive nervousness, had cut his master's chin, the latter, who had a pair of scissors in his hand, said to Hebert when he approached him with the razor, Take care of thyself, rogue; if thou cuttest me, I will stick thee in the belly with my scissors.' This threat, made with an air almost serious, but which was in fact only a joke, such as I have a hundred times seen the Emperor amuse himself with, had such an effect on Hebert that he could not complete his operations. He was seized with a convulsive trembling fit; his razor fell from his hands; and the General-in-Chief stretched out his neck, crying out, ready to burst with laughter, Go on, go on, finish what you have begun, poltroon.' Hebert was not only obliged to give it up, but from this time to renounce the office of barber. The Emperor did not like this excessive timidity in the people about him; but this did not prevent him, when he restored the clAteau of Rumbouillet, from giving the place of porter to Hebert, who had asked for it."
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