It was at midnight that Junot, then already Town Mayor of Paris, led pretty Mile Permon to the altar; at midnight that the Third Consul married the daughter of Barbe-Marbois, and at midnight, too, that the daughter of Champagny, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was married in the same church of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, where ten years earlier the negro's wedding had provoked such uncontrollable peals of laughter.
As a proof of the change wrought in manners since that time we may quote a letter in which one of Champagny's nieces describes her cousin's wedding:
'On Wednesday I had a most amiable note from my aunt, begging us to attend the wedding, which was to take place at night.... We had a carriage for M. Balzac and ourselves, which took us to the town haU at half-past eight. The Mayor made a rather odd speech, in which, among other things, addressing Mademoiselle, he urged her to assume paternal feelings; he said that their union would be a happy one because it was the fruit of the wishes of their parents and of a long-standing affection (they have known each other for ten days!) In spite of the solemnity of the ceremony, everybody found it difficult to keep a straight face/
The company left the town hall to go and take supper; then, at midnight, they went to the church, which they found completely lighted up.
"The chancel was full, for we were nine carriage-loads. M. le cure of Saint-Thomas d'Antin made a long address, but even if it had been longer one would not have tired of listening. I was really edified by the way people behaved in church: the two fathers and the two grandmothers on their knees all through the address and the mass. The two mothers looked like angels. On coming out of the church Zephyrine and her husband got into Mme Martroy's carriage, and M. and Mme de Champagny drove away alone. We did not get home till two o'clock/
In this pleasing account one detail gives us pause: the couple had known each other for barely ten days. This was precisely the usual defect of First Empire marriages. Arranged in a hurry, during an army leave, they were rushed through, as a rule, after a meeting at a ball, or because an old aunt with money to bequeath wanted her nephew to settle down. There was no engagement in the ordinary sense: the two families came to an understanding, sometimes almost without consulting the interested parties; money matters were settled, then everything was carried through at the speed of a cavalry charge.
The bridegroom sent his presents: dresses, shawls, jewellery, miniatures, packed in the traditional corbeille in the shape of an egg or a conch-shell, or representing an altar of love. He did not forget the gloves, the lace, the bottles of Eau de Ninon and the complexion creams to be enclosed in the Sultan., a sort of corbeille No. 2. The contract was signed in the presence of a small gathering of intimate friends, and the wedding was celebrated according to the nocturnal ceremonial just described.
More often than not the honeymoon would be even shorter than the engagement. Instead of a wedding trip, the husband, if an officer, would soon be on his way back to the front. On his return, if he did return, he might be surprised to learn that he was a father; but there was also a chance that the young wife, on catching sight of him, might ask herself, 'Who is this handsome soldier walking in without knocking?'
Another rock on which marriages under the Empire might founder was the enormous difference in age between husband and wife. Many distinguished soldiers, who had not had an opportunity of marrying in their youth, thought of it late in life, and offered their name, titles and fortune to attractive young persons who might have been their daughters. This was the fate of Augereau, Oudinot and many others. General Mouton, twenty years older than his wife, begged his aides-de-camp 'to think of her as a statue in black marble'. General Legrand, at the age of fifty-odd, married a young lady of seventeen. And it was not only the brass hats that went in for these experiments. Many a former officer, many a veteran soldier, once home for good, cherished the thought of seeing some fresh young creature at his side. They had faced so many dangers that one more risk did not alarm them, and these heroes of the Old Guard hoped to become the heroes of the New,
There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the confidence imparted one day to Stendhal and entered, piping hot, in his diary. The Abbe Helie, who has confessed and studied mankind at first hand, tells me that out of a hundred marriages there are twenty-five good ones, between people in love with each other, and fifty in which people get on together - even love each other - although the husband is often deceived/
The Abbe's assertions may have been somewhat fanciful, but more official statistics confirm Ids poor opinion of the morals of his time. For one thing, there were far fewer married people than formerly. In the department of the Seine they numbered hardly one-fifth more than the unmarried. According to another, no less significant figure, the total number of illegitimate children registered in Paris, in certain years, was almost equal to a third of the legitimate births.
In the environs of the capital the proportion must have been greater still, for the local youth was said to be pleasure-loving. When a little maidservant of the Chateaubriands was confined one morning at the Vallee-aux-Loups, with no clear idea of where the infant came from, the good people of the neighbourhood thought nothing of the incident. 'For a long time now', wrote Mme de Chateaubriand in her Souvenirs, 'nobody in Chatenay expected a girl to be a girl on her wedding day/
And what happened at Chatenay must have been the order or the day elsewhere, for the morals of Paris had reached the provinces, the small towns and even the countryside. We have only to read what Bishop Le Coz says of his Breton flock, the prefect Dupin of the people under his jurisdiction in the Bocage, and Henri Beyle of the unmarried couples of Toulon. All that generation grew up at a time when morals had little importance, and the France of the Empire, daughter of the France of the Directory, could not become a school of virtue from one day to another.
It was Bonaparte's ambition to make the family the pivot of society once more. It took him only a few months to have it expressed in the Code Civil, but it would take a long time for the principles to find their way into conduct, and for the marriage tie to recover its former strength.
It must be admitted that in the Master's entourage, especially his own family, the good example was hardly set. With the exception of Louis, who had become a valetudinarian early in life, all his brothers had mistresses; Joseph made a collection of them. Lucien, all the time he was Minister of Interior, treated the fair petitioners and the actresses of the theatres as a Pasha does his favourites. And the Corsican blood was no less ardent on the female side: Elisa's quasi-official liaison with Fontanes constituted her, so to speak, Grand Mistress of the University; Caroline consoled herself for Murat's infidelities by falling into the arms of Junot. As for the too sensual Pauline, she was preparing to embody Canova's Venuses by infatuating all the handsome men she met on the way.
The Imperial pair themselves had not always been a model couple. Josephine's fancies, in the early days of her marriage, are only too well known. And a few years later, only the ingenuousness of a provincial ecclesiastic can have allowed him to welcome Bonaparte's sobered spouse on the threshold of his church with the words, 'One of the great days for the cure of Le Havre and for his clergy is that on which it is permitted them to offer the tribute of their admiration to your virtues. . .*
Bonaparte himself had had many love affairs, but they would always occupy only a secondary place in his life, for he had a domestic soul. He was born to be a husband -and was to prove it more than once. Hence his relative severity with regard to the irregular situations of other people.