n
an ambitious family, styled _parvenus_ by the ungenerous, shooting aloft
swiftly as the flames of Vesuvius, ardent as its inner fires, and
stubborn as its hardened lava--given also an imperious brother
determined to marry his younger brothers and sisters, not as they
willed, but as he willed--and it is clear that materials are at hand
sufficient to make the fortunes of a dozen comediettas.

To the marriage of Pauline Bonaparte only the briefest reference need
here be made. The wild humour of her blood showed itself before her
first marriage; and after the death of her husband, General Leclerc,
in San Domingo, she privately espoused Prince Borghese before the
legal time of mourning had expired, an indiscretion which much annoyed
Napoleon (August, 1803). Ultimately this brilliant, frivolous creature
resided in the splendid mansion which now forms the British embassy in
Paris. The case of Louis Bonaparte was somewhat different. Nurtured as
he had been in his early years by Napoleon, he had rewarded him by
contracting a dutiful match with Hortense Beauharnais (January, 1802);
but that union was to be marred by a grotesquely horrible jealousy
which the young husband soon conceived for his powerful brother.

For the present, however, the chief trouble was caused by Lucien,
whose address had saved matters at the few critical minutes of
Brumaire. Gifted with a strong vein of literary feeling and oratorical
fire he united in his person the obstinacy of a Bonaparte, the
headstrong feelings of a poet, and the dogmatism of a Corsican
republican. His presumptuous conduct had already embroiled him with
the First Consul, who deprived him of his Ministry and sent him as
ambassador to Madrid.[276] He further sinned, first by hurrying on
peace with Portugal--it is said for a handsome present from
Lisbon--and later by refusing to marry the widow of the King of
Etruria. In this he persisted, despite the urgent representations of
Napoleon and Joseph: "You know very well that I am a republican, and
that a queen is not what suits me, an ugly queen too!"--" What a pity
your answer was not cut short, it would have been quite Roman," sneered
Joseph at his younger brother, once the Brutus of the Jacobin clubs. But
Lucien was proof against all the splendours of the royal match; he was
madly in love with a Madame Jouberthon, the deserted wife of a Paris
stockbroker; and in order to checkmate all Napoleon's attempts to force
on a hated union, he