While I was in the Emperor’s apartment, waiting for the announcement of dinner, the conversation fell on Madame Campan’s establishment, the young persons who had been educated in it, and the fortunes which the Emperor had conferred on some of them. He particularly alluded to Stephanie de Beauharnais, afterwards Princess of Baden, to whom he said he was much attached. He entered into many details respecting her.
Princess Stephanie of Baden lost her mother in her childhood. She was left in the care of an English lady, her mother’s intimate friend, who was very rich and without children, and who confided the education of her _protegée_ to some old nuns in the south of France, I believe at Montauban.
Napoleon, during his Consulship, one day heard Josephine mention this circumstance, while alluding to her young relation Stephanie. “How can you permit this?” said he. “How can you suffer one of your name to be supported by a foreigner, an Englishwoman, who must at this moment be regarded as our enemy? Are you not afraid that your memory will one day suffer for this?” A courier, was immediately despatched to bring the young lady to the Tuileries; but the nuns refused to part with her. Napoleon, however, instituted the necessary legal forms, and a second courier was speedily sent to the Prefect of the district, with orders instantly to seize the person of the young lady in the name of the law.
Owing to the circumstances of the times, such was the influence of certain systems of education, and of the opinions which they inspired, that Stephanie’s removal was to herself a source of deep regret; and she beheld not without terror him who declared himself her relative, and who was about to become her benefactor. She was placed in the establishment of Madame Campan, at St. Germain; all sorts of masters were appointed to superintend her education, and, on her introduction to the world, her beauty, wit, accomplishments, and virtues, rendered her an object of universal admiration.
The Emperor adopted her as his daughter, and gave her in marriage to the hereditary Prince of Baden. This union was for several years far from being happy. In course of time, however, the causes of difference gradually vanished; the Prince and Princess became attached to each other, and from that moment they had only to regret the happiness of which they had deprived themselves during the early years of their marriage.
