Chateaubriand) and was a talented amateur mustctan: she played the
piano and harp and knew the works of Mozart and Beethoven well. Most
pertinently fo r Napoleon, who regarded her before he met her as a mere
'walking womb', she was a virgin, never having been left alone with any
man.
The Austrians were still anxious that Marie-Louise might end up not
properly married to Napoleon in the sight of God, for the marriage to
Josephine had not been properly annulled; the Pope alone could do that
yet he was not only Napoleon's prisoner but had excommunicated him.
Cardinal Fesch, the 'fixer' in matters religious, was wheeled in to find a
solution. He quickly brought up the convenient issue of the absence of a
parish priest and legal witnesses at Josephine's wedding, adding the new
argument that Napoleon had not given his free consent to the religious
marriage, having been 'bounced' into it by Josephine on the eve of his
coronation to avoid a national scandal. This convenient fiction was
accepted as removing the last obstacle to a full and proper marriage.
Lavish preparations were now made in France for the reception of the
Austrian princess. Vast sums were spent on the wedding and the total
refurbishment of the Chateau of Compiegne, where Napoleon had chosen
to meet his bride. Caroline Murat was sent to Vienna to arrange Marie
Louise's trousseau. This was another inept choice, and not just because
the Murats had thrown the Habsburgs out of Naples: Caroline hated to
see any other woman getting preferment from her brother, especially one
who, by producing an heir, would scotch all the wilder dreams of the
Murats of possible fu ture accession to the purple. Not surprisingly,
Marie-Louise and Caroline took an intense dislike to one another when
they met in Munich; of the two women, the Austrian was the shrewder,
for she saw right through the Bonaparte woman while Caroline grossly
underrated her.
Marie-Louise was married by proxy in Vienna on I I March and
commenced her progress to Compiegne, accompanied by Caroline as
'chaperone'. Caroline tried to bully her charge by sending all her
entourage and even her dog back to Vienna. But she was discomfited by
the daily arrival of letters from her brother to Marie-Louise, full of ripe
sentiments of undying affection. In Compiegne Napoleon was as fretful
and impatient as a young bridegroom, counting the days and hours until
his beloved's arrival. Once he learned from Fesch that the proxy match in
Vienna - with Napoleon represented by the bride's uncle Archduke Karl
- was valid, he was determined to consummate the marriage as soon as
possible. He did, however, keep on his Italian mistress until the night
before he set out to meet his bride.