Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [132]
Emperor Alexander, the “benevolent protector,” was a popular attraction in Paris. Among the victorious allied leaders, Frederick William of Prussia was only a king, while the other emperor, the dour Emperor Francis of Austria, reached the capital long after every one else. But Alexander’s stardom was not merely a question of rank. There was a genuine curiosity among Parisians for the liberal emperor who had conquered Napoleon. Lucia was not immune to it, and on the way home from class, she often mingled with the ogling crowd stationed under the emperor’s windows. “Today I saw him come home on horseback, dressed in a simple green uniform, with only a small escort,”39 she wrote in her diary, quite taken by the emperor’s simple ways. She was even more impressed when Alexander put an end to his soldiers’ high-flying lifestyle with the start of Holy Week. Easter and Orthodox Easter happened to coincide in 1814. According to Lucia, the Russian emperor was “a model of piety.” He abstained from eating “not just meat but also eggs, milk and butter, out of respect for Catholics.”40 After having indulged their palates at Véry’s, his officers were limited to a diet of “potatoes, beans, dried prunes, etc…” and were forbidden to go to the theatre.
At first, Alexander lived with his retinue on the top floors of Talleyrand’s large mansion on Place de la Concorde because the palace of the Elysée, which he would eventually occupy, was still being refurbished. Talleyrand was quite happy to move down to the mezzanine floor with his staff in exchange for the privilege of having the emperor and his principal advisers at such close quarters. He and Alexander dined together most evenings. Their associates collaborated closely.
With one eye on France’s best interests and the other on his own political survival, Talleyrand had quickly concluded that the preferable outcome of Napoleon’s debacle was a return to Bourbon authority, this time held in check by a parliamentary constitution which he immediately set about drafting. Alexander was not at all keen to see a Bourbon back on the throne in France, and especially not the arch-conservative pretender Louis XVIII, younger brother of the decapitated Louis XVI, who was on his way to Paris and making large claims already. It was only because Talleyrand waved before Alexander the draft of his liberal constitution that the Russian emperor finally resigned himself to a Bourbon restoration.
On 12 April, two days after Easter, Lucia was again in Place Vendôme to see the Comte d’Artois, Louis XVIII’s brother, make a triumphant entry in Paris. He was “dressed up” as a National Guard, Lucia pointedly wrote, with the royal blue cordons as the only embellishment. From Place Vendôme, the Bourbon vanguard moved directly to the Palais des Tuileries, and soon the Comte d’Artois came out to greet the very large crowd from deposed empress Marie Louise’s balcony. The crowd refused to go away after he had gone back inside, but continued to clap and cheer, demanding that he come out again. Lucia found the scene rather distasteful: “It reminded me of the theatre.”41
Talleyrand had accurately read the mood of the people, who seemed to welcome the idea of a return to the monarchy. Lucia was never a royalist, let alone a Bourbon sympathiser, yet she had always felt a deep sorrow for the fate of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. She went looking for the common grave at the old Cimetière de la Madeleine where the decapitated bodies of the king and queen had been dumped twenty-one years