By I I April - the date of the Treaty of Fontainebleau - he seems to
have assumed she would be accompanying him to Elba. 'You are to have
at least one great country house and a beautiful country when you tire of
my island of Elba, and I begin to bore you, as I can but do when I am
older and you still young.' This crossed with a letter in which Marie
Louise asked his permission for her to interview her father, with a view to
being assigned the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Soon she was on her way to
Rambouillet to meet her father, and sent him a letter through the Polish
officer who was acting as go-between. Napoleon finally bestirred himself
and decided to send a troop of cavalry to bring her back to Fontainebleau.
Somewhat complacently he wrote on IS April: 'You must have met your
father by this time. I wish you to come to Fontainebleau tomorrow, so
that we may set out together for that land of sanctuary and rest, where I
shall be happy - provided you can make up your mind to be so and forget
worldly greatness.'
He was too late. His vacillation had forced Marie-Louise to take
decisive action on her own, but as soon as she crossed Austrian lines she
found she was no longer a free agent. There can be no mistaking the
genuine sorrow with which she announced that seeking her father's help
had been a grave error: 'You will know by now that they have made me
leave Orleans and that orders have been given to prevent me from joining
you, and even to resort to force if necessary. Be on your guard, my
darling, we are being duped. I am in deadly anxiety on your behalf but I
shall take a firm line with my father. I shall tell him that I absolutely insist
on joining you, and that I shall not let myself be talked into doing
anything else.'
The 'firm line' produced no results, nor was it likely to even if Marie
Louise had had the courage to oppose her father's will, when she had
been brought up to think such conduct unnatural. Soon she was writing
dolefully again to Napoleon: 'He will not allow me to join you now, or see
you, or travel with you to Elba ... He insisted on two months first in
Austria and then in Parma and that I could see you there.' She was
escorted to Compiegne, where she met the Czar and the Kaiser. All who
talked to her were astonished that she would hear no ill of her husband,
and even refused to be swayed when Napoleon's old associates detailed
his many affairs and infidelities. Forced back to Austria against her will,
she was still at this stage determined to be reunited with Napoleon on
Elba.
But Napoleon was beginning to suspect that Metternich's malice
would ensure that he never saw his wife and son again - a suspicion
confirmed by the arch and disingenuous letter he received from Emperor
marcin
(Marcin)
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