United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is true Malmaison was not Bonaparte's sole country residence. The city of Paris had presented him with the pleasure-castle of St. Cloud, the same which Louis XVI. gave to his wife, and where, to the very great annoyance of the proud Parisians, she had for the first time engraven on the regulation-tablets, at the entrance of the park, the fatal words "De par la Reine."
Josephine, the lonely and rejected one, had nothing to do with those fearful events which shook France; she played no active part in the great drama which was performed before the walls of Paris, and which closed with the fall of the hero whom she had so warmly and so truly loved. Josephine, during those days of horror and of decisive conflicts, was in her pleasure-castle of Navarra.
Privately, and in all secrecy, for Maria Louisa's jealousy was ever on the watch, and she would never have consented to allow her son to go to her rival; without pomp, without suite, the emperor took a drive with the little three- year-old King of Rome to the pleasure-castle of Bagatelle, whither he had invited the Empress Josephine through his trusty chamberlain Constant.
Now began for Josephine and Bonaparte happy days, illumined by all the splendor of festivities, of fealty exhibited, of triumphs realized. After lingering a few days in Milan, Bonaparte, with his wife, the whole train of his friends, his adjutants and servants, removed to the pleasure-castle of Montebello, near Milan.
Word Of The Day