[…] however much of a handful she could be, Pauline still had one virtue: loyalty. When Napoleon was down on his luck, she was the only sibling to support him. When he divorced the wife he loved, a move born of the necessity to produce an heir, Pauline threw no less than ten grand balls to cheer him up (true, she’d never liked Josephine anyway). And though she may not have agreed with his imperial pretensions, she sold her jewels to pay for his armies (extravagance is sometimes a good investment).
Even as forces within the French empire conspired against her brother, Pauline could be counted on. In April 1814, after a decade as emperor, Napoleon was ousted and exiled to the island of Elba, a rocky but beautiful outcropping off the Mediterranean coast of Italy. Pauline went with him. “If he will permit me to follow him, I will never leave him… I have not loved him because he was a Sovereign, but because he is my brother,” she said. To scare up cash, she sold properties and more jewelry. Just as she had been on Saint-Domingue, she became first lady of Elba, organizing balls, theatrical presentations, and receptions for the exiled emperor, holding court with local leading families and a growing retinue of hangers-on and exiled French officials. Napoleon even bestowed on her the awesome title of “Organizer of Entertainments on the Island of Elba,” which sounds like the nineteenth-century equivalent of “Cruise Director of the Love Boat.”
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Pauline Bonaparte, The Exhibitionist Princess.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 229-30. Print.
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