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The Empress had gone upon her hopeless mission, never to return; and the faithful Comte de Bombelles was with her to advise and protect. Court and political intrigues had loosened the bond that had united the Emperor to the great clerical leaders who had made the empire. Whatever his dreams may have been, the reality was pitiful.
The answer he gave was the confirmation of Bombelles in all his honours, and the conclusion of a treaty with Austria, securing the assistance of her arms. A military force had been sent to Parma to escort the body of the late Duchess to Vienna; but on the principle that the living are of more consequence than the dead, it remained there to protect the new Duke from his subjects.
As far as I can judge, M. de Bombelles is entitled to the relief he seeks, and every marriage contracted with a Protestant is null and void by the laws of France." "Oh, sire," cried I, "would I had married a Protestant." The king smiled for a moment at my jest, then resumed: "I blame the military school."
This attempt on his part to violate, upon such grounds, the sanctity of the nuptial vow, whilst it was calculated to rekindle the spirit of religious persecution, was productive of very unfavourable consequences to the character of M. de Bombelles; the great cry was against him, he stood alone and unsupported in the contest, for even the greatest bigots themselves would not intermeddle or appear to applaud a matter which attacked both honour and good feeling: the comrades of M. de Bombelles refused to associate with him; but the finishing stroke came from his old companions at the military school, where he had been brought up.
Marie-Louise had not a bad disposition, but she always let her husband of the hour govern as he chose; of the four or five of these husbands, the last two, and particularly the hated Count de Bombelles, undid all the good done by their more humane predecessors. The Parmese petitioned their new Duke to send the man away, and to grant them some measure of freedom.
He was a M. de Bombelles, whose mother had been a Miss Mackan, an intimate friend of Madame Elisabeth, and had married the Count of Bombelles, ambassador of Louis XVI. in Portugal, and later in Venice, who took orders after his wife's death and became Bishop of Amiens under the Restoration.
As far as I can judge, M. de Bombelles is entitled to the relief he seeks, and every marriage contracted with a Protestant is null and void by the laws of France." "Oh, sire," cried I, " would I had married a Protestant." The king smiled for a moment at my jest, then resumed: "I blame the military school."
The Marquis de Bombelles, the Ambassador at Vienna in 1790, was the only French envoy who refused to swear to the constitution; the Queen, being apprised that by this brave and noble conduct M. de Bombelles, the father of a large family, had been reduced to the most unfortunate position, wrote him a letter of commendation with her own hand.
General de Trobriand, the Frenchman who won distinction on the northern side in the American civil war, told me recently how painfully surprised he was when once at Venice he had heard Napoleon's widow, then the wife of Count de Bombelles, say, in speaking of her marriage to the great Emperor, "I was sacrificed."
But the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in 1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins.
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