“What would you think of me if Your Majesty were in Mexico, and all of a sudden I told you I could not fulfill the terms of our agreement?”
“Circumstances have changed. War is war.”
“And agreements are agreements, Your Majesty. You promised us we would always have your support.”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“We can’t leave the Mexicans at the mercy of the United States.”
The emperor fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair.
“France will lose everything it has invested in Mexico if we leave. Mexico possesses great riches,” said Carlota. “We are pacifying the country, and that takes time. Mexico is a powder keg of constant civil wars, that’s why they turned to us. Mexicans want peace.”
Napoleon stood and paced nervously around the room. How small he was compared to the greatness of Bonaparte. Beside him, Napoleon III was a minnow, a coward, a man whose word was worthless.
To Carlota’s surprise, the emperor suddenly broke down in tears.
Eugénie de Montijo, who had been listening through the door, entered the room. She was furious: she’d warned Napoleon that, whatever happened, he must not crack. Men, she thought with scorn.
“Let’s continue this conversation in my study,” Eugénie ordered. “We’ll give the emperor a few minutes to regain his composure.”
Carlota, stunned, stood and followed Eugénie. Entering her study, she found the French minister of war and minister of finance waiting for them.
The two women sat down to negotiate. Eugénie was a tougher nut to crack; she defended her husband’s decision with a coldness that drove Carlota to despair. There was no argument that could make Eugénie see that withdrawing the troops from Mexico would be suicide. Carlota felt as if her nerves were about to betray her; her throat was dry and she could feel her temple palpitating at great speed.
“It is not France’s fault that you have been unable to spread out your resources,” said Eugénie.
“But it’s the French bankers who are appropriating the loans that should be going to Mexico!” said Carlota, raising her voice.
“You insult us. If anyone is dishonest and ungrateful, it’s the Mexicans,” one of the ministers said.
“Mind your manners, if you please. You don’t know the valor of the Mexicans!”
With Carlota hyperventilating due to her tight corset, Eugénie urged calm.
“You are in breach of the Treaty of Miramare!” Carlota yelled. And to everyone’s surprise, she recited some paragraphs from memory.
The room was filled with shouting; Carlota insulted Bazaine by saying he was an informant for Napoleon, a spy in her own house.
“Bazaine is one of the best soldiers we have, he’s too devoted to France’s honor to compromise it,” Eugénie argued.
The minister of war, riled, responded with a series of allegations against Maximilian.
“I demand respect for the emperor!” said Carlota.
“The man isn’t even capable of coming in person; instead he sends his wife.”
Carlota pressed her lips together.
“Enough, for the love of God,” Eugénie pleaded. “I think I’m going to faint.”
“For heaven’s sake, Eugénie, stop playing the damsel in distress; we’re discussing politics!”
And so, with her insults and truths, Carlota signed her own sentence. The next day, Napoleon ordered the immediate, permanent, and irrevocable evacuation of the expeditionary troops. Carlota’s failure had been colossal.
Despite everything, Carlota kept faith; she thought she could still do something to persuade Napoleon. The Mexican minister gave her the terrible news in person. Unperturbed, unblinking, she listened to him in complete denial, knowing that until she heard it from the mouth of the emperor himself, the battle wasn’t over. Eugénie had also sent her baskets of flowers and fruit that Carlota intended to let rot. With her requests going unanswered, she began to hate Napoleon with all her might. She wanted to slap him, call him a liar, a coward, an imbecile. In a final effort, she informed the French ministers that their war bonds would be worthless if she left without obtaining help.
On August 19, 1866, in the late afternoon, Napoleon III, the source of all her misery, arrived at the Grand Hotel to speak to Carlota. The decision had been made.
She asked for clemency. “If Your Majesty authorizes a loan of ninety million francs for Mexico, the empire will be able to save itself. We would return it in monthly installments.”
Napoleon was moved by the woman’s strength. Breathing her last breath, she still fought. What a great monarch she would have been, he thought. He got up from the armchair with difficulty due to his arthritis, approached her, took her hand, and kissed it with great tenderness and profound respect. A single silent tear slid down Carlota’s cheek. Then, without saying a word, he left the room.
The formal refusal of her requests took a few more days to arrive. Carlota then sent a telegram to Maximilian. The message contained three words written in Spanish. Three words that seemed to encapsulate all the sorrow in her heart and the erosion of her spirit. Todo es inútil, it said. It’s all useless.
31
Carlota left Paris on the imperial train, heading for Rome to intercede for the empire with Pope Pius IX. She barely spoke; she had weakened, and dark rings circled her eyes. Though Manuelita and Frau Döblinger tried to get her to eat, she hardly touched a bite. Asleep, she was tormented by nightmares in which she was being slowly poisoned, and she feared her dreams were a premonition. Dr. Bohuslavek was concerned about her, especially given her condition, and he worried that if she didn’t take care of herself and continued to be burdened with so many worries, she would end up having a miscarriage. Sometimes he wondered if that was what the empress wanted. Regardless, the young doctor tried every means at his disposal to dissuade her from visiting the pope in her condition. Luck was on his side, however, when halfway there they were informed that northern Italy was in the grips of a cholera outbreak, forcing them to take a different route.
“We should rest at Miramare,” her attendants said to her. And Carlota, who was mentally and physically exhausted, didn’t protest.
The road was tortuous. She vomited constantly from the nausea, and Dr. Bohuslavek decided to administer tranquilizers to make the journey more comfortable. But when they reached Italian soil, Carlota seemed reborn. When she lived here, she’d still thought that she was on the verge of finding happiness. She remembered the excitement of falling in love, thinking that if she was loved by her archduke, nothing in life could be bad. She thought about the time that had passed since then, and a shiver ran down the back of her neck as she realized that it wasn’t even a decade. Time . . . it was so relative, so inexorable. One of many afternoons when she was moved by her memories, she wrote to Maximilian:
Beloved Max,
From this country of so many happy memories, where we enjoyed the best years of our lives, my thoughts turn constantly to you. Everything here makes me think of you: your Lake Como, which you loved so much, is in front of me, tranquil and blue. It’s all here. Only you are missing, so far away, and almost ten years have passed! Even so, it’s as if it were yesterday, and the nature here speaks to me only of immutable happiness, not of difficulties and disappointments. All the names, all the events are emerging again from forgotten corners of my mind, and I am living again in our Lombardy, as if I had never left it. I’m reliving two years that were so dear to us. I only wish I could see you here.
Carlota
Perhaps it was the calm that the setting brought her, or the knowledge that she’d done everything Maximilian had entrusted to her, but Carlota’s health began to show signs of improvement. Perhaps she started to forgive herself. She reached Miramare just in time for September 16, Mexico’s Independence Day. In an act of patriotism and liberalism—and because his was a liberal soul trapped in the body of a Conservative—Maximilian had adopted the custom of celebrating the occasion by imitating the in
surrectionists’ cry of independence. To mark the occasion, Carlota ordered the Austrian fleet to fire a twenty-one-gun salute at six o’clock in the morning, wore an imperial cloak and diamond diadem, and fêted her people with a lunch. She had the table dressed in the colors of the Mexican flag, she drank a toast, and, after raising the Mexican flag in the garden, she intoned a Viva México! with her eyes full of emotion. She missed it all. She missed Chapultepec, the view from her window of the immense valley. She missed the sound of the markets, the smells of the fruit. She missed the women’s braids, the hot sauces. She missed the people’s affection and the innocence of their voices. She missed speaking Spanish, and she missed loving Maximilian.
Strolling through Miramare’s gardens soothed her. Manuelita usually accompanied her on her walks through the artificial forest that Max, little by little, plant by plant, had slowly created. The castle was just a mass of stones compared to the splendor of that garden. If only Maximilian could see it, she thought. Walking among the trees made her feel at peace. She listened to the birdsong and liked to think the wind that caressed her was the same wind that blew on the other side of the ocean.
Charles de Bombelles always followed her at a cautious distance. Since their arrival in Paris, they had hardly crossed paths. With so many thoughts in her head, with so much at stake, she had barely noticed the presence of the man who managed to arouse immeasurable jealousy in her. And suddenly, at Miramare, Bombelles emerged in all his splendor. He didn’t give her a moment’s peace: when she went out to stroll with Manuelita, there he was, right behind her, walking the same route. When she sat down to write letters, Bombelles would be a few yards away, reading in an armchair; when Dr. Bohuslavek attended to her, Bombelles waited at the door. But what worried Carlota most was seeing Bombelles in the kitchen, inspecting all of the food that was prepared for her. She began to feel watched. She couldn’t take a step without Bombelles taking one, too, and far from reassuring her, it began to unnerve her. One day, seized by panic, she confessed to Mathilde.
“Mathilde, I think Bombelles is Napoleon’s spy.”
“What do you mean, my child? He’s the archduke’s right-hand man.”
“I think he’s a traitor,” Carlota argued.
“Oh, don’t say that, child! Charles is here to watch over you.”
“I’m afraid, Mathilde.”
The chambermaid enveloped her in an embrace that both comforted and immobilized her with equal force.
“No, child, don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine, child. Everything will be fine.”
But Carlota knew that the fear she felt would neither be allayed with motherly words nor disintegrate in the wind like clouds in the sky.
32
1864, Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City
Chapultepec was a Tower of Babel. Voices in German, French, and Spanish could be heard in the corridors at all times. Austrians, Belgians, French, Hungarians, and Mexicans struggled to avoid becoming lost in the mosaic of languages and customs that coexisted in the palace. Sometimes they had to use interpreters who suppressed words at their own discretion or convenience, depending on how sympathetic they were to a speaker. The work of some was hindered by the work of others, and it wasn’t long before quarrels, grudges, and intrigues began to emerge, and courtiers needed to keep out of these disputes if they were to ensure their advancement. Mexico’s future was of little importance to many of them so long as they could look the part and ensure the well-being of their families for several generations.
However, there was a single issue, just one, on which they all agreed. They were united in viewing Sebastian Schertzenlechner as a malign and harmful presence, always lurking, whether in the shadows or broad daylight. The emperor’s office was in his clutches. Nothing went in or out of the royal study without him knowing, and everyone, including Carlota, knew he had the emperor’s ear. Everyone wondered what his credentials were, and some even suggested it was his blue eyes for which the emperor held him in such high regard. But the reality was that, for good or ill, Maximilian listened to him and, worse, paid attention to him. It had been Sebastian’s idea to demote Almonte and his team, giving him a purely ornamental role after having been the imperial regent. Maximilian dispensed with his services in his cabinet overnight. When the emperor was asked about this decision, he merely said that Almonte was miserly, cold, and vindictive, and that he didn’t justify the use of funds. Everyone knew the real reason was that one afternoon in an argument with Sebastian, Almonte had called him effeminate.
Constanza, meanwhile, didn’t miss a detail. She was alert to everything, taking in every look, every insinuation, every gesture. The slightest sign of doubt aroused her suspicion. She wanted to be very sure who could be trusted in that nest of vipers. How many ladies of the court would be there out of conviction, and how many, like her, were acting as Trojan horses? She understood from the moment she set foot in the castle that she couldn’t retreat into her shell. She needed to make friends, mix with the court, get close to the servants who made the monarchs’ beds, changed the chamber pots, and prepared the food. It was the only way she felt she had some control. She had to watch and remain silent. Like when her mother slipped books to her at night, and the next morning she would feign stupidity in front of the men of the house, to whom she was just a docile woman who was prettier when she was silent.
It was undoubtedly an inconvenience not knowing all the languages. All of a sudden, she felt cut off, unable to understand entire conversations right in front of her. The empress tended to speak to them in Spanish, but if someone addressed her in German, Italian, or French, she switched languages with incredible speed. Far from upsetting Constanza, it made her envious. She wanted to learn all the languages the empress knew, though she knew such privileges were bestowed only on kings and queens. The empress was fluent in six languages. Her native tongue was French, and she acquired German from her father, which she also used to communicate with her husband. She had mastered English, and the years in Lombardy-Venetia had enabled her to learn Italian. Before coming to Mexico, she had learned Spanish and also took lessons in Nahuatl. Such learning wasn’t for common folk. But Constanza had a good ear and a love of books, something that Carlota discovered after a couple of conversations with her. She soon placed her among the small number of ladies of honor with whom she could discuss more elevated matters, which also gave Constanza access to the castle library. There she found translations of books that she, secretly, already knew. And though it was a huge effort, Constanza managed to learn a few words of French. Even so, she knew that in order to be successful in her mission, the issue of language was something she urgently needed to resolve.
One morning while Constanza was walking with Carlota after Mass, a hummingbird hovering to drink nectar from a nearby flower caught the empress’s attention.
“What a beautiful creature!”
“It’s a hummingbird, Your Majesty.”
“I’d heard of them, but never seen one.”
“According to a Nahuatl legend, they are warriors who died in combat, Your Majesty.”
Carlota, Constanza thought, was delighted. A smile even appeared on her lips. The two of them stood watching the little bird suspended in the air.
“Maximilian would have loved to see it. Mexico is full of beauty,” Carlota finally said.
“Your Majesty,” Constanza said timidly, “I wanted to ask you a favor.”
The hummingbird flew off when Carlota turned around. Constanza, curtsying, went on.
“I’d like to learn French, Your Majesty. I’ve realized that I would be more useful to you if I had a better command of the language.”
Carlota scrutinized her without blinking.
“Then learn, Constanza. Learn. You don’t need my consent for that.”
“Yes, but is there someone in the court who would teach me?”
“Ma chérie, the court is full of Frenchmen.”
And without another word, they set off. Constanza thought
to herself that she knew nothing about the woman in front of her. She had to be cautious and very astute. Who could she practice French with without losing sight of the empress? She would search with a careful eye until she found the right teacher.
33
Without knowing exactly why, Philippe felt at home at last in the Valley of Mexico. Perhaps it was because the city’s Belgian merchants welcomed them with a banquet complete with wine and champagne, or because wherever he looked he saw French soldiers in their medaled uniforms. But most likely it was that, for the first time in his life, Philippe felt that he was part of something important.
He couldn’t say that Mexico City was the most beautiful city he’d ever seen. The streets were chaotic and dirty, and there were stalls everywhere selling everything from hot food to ointments for rheumatism, but the bustle made him feel alive; the city was like a great being that never slept. Again, Mexico with its contrasts. Its greatest riches existed side by side on the streets with barefooted natives. Reaching the center, Philippe—along with the rest of the soldiers—fell silent. There were churches, parks, beautiful buildings. Had it not been for the fact that they’d crossed seas and mountains to reach it, he would have sworn he was in a European city.
A cloud of dust approached them. To everyone’s surprise, including Van der Smissen’s, the sovereigns had come to welcome them. Maximilian was on horseback, followed by the French marshal Bazaine, and a short distance behind, the empress Charlotte rode in an open calash. The emperor began his welcome speech, but Philippe couldn’t take his eyes off the empress behind him. He hadn’t imagined her like this: she seemed so young, beautiful in an austere way, without the gaudiness of some Belgian women he’d seen. She seemed greatly moved; Philippe could see it. Drums suddenly began to beat. The officers saluted with their swords, the troops presented arms, and after the cheers they yelled, “Long live the emperor! Long live the empress!”
The Empress: A novel Page 13