A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French.

by Ida M. Tarbell

Life of Josephine

CHAPTER I
FAMILY—EARLY SURROUNDINGS—EUGENE DE BEAUHARNAIS—MARRIAGE—SEPARATION FROM HER HUSBAND

The proudest monument in the Island of Martinique, in the French West Indies, so any inhabitant will tell you, is the statue of a woman in the town of St. Pierre. The woman thus honored is Josephine, once Empress of the French People, who, so the legend on the pedestal of the statue relates was born at the hamlet of Trois Ilets, Martinique, on June 23, 1763.

If one searches in the legends of the island for an explanation of the position to which the child of this humble spot arose, he will find nothing more serious than the prophecy of an old negress, made to the little girl herself, that one day she would be Queen of France. If he looks in the chronicles of the island for an explanation, he will find nothing to indicate that she could ever rise higher than the life of an indolent creole, a life narrowed by poverty and made tolerable chiefly by the beauty of the nature about her and by her own happy indifference of temperament.

Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, the child’s father, was the eldest son of a noble of Blois, France, who went to Martinique in the first quarter of the eighteenth century chiefly because he could not succeed in anything in his own country. He did no better in Martinique than he had done in France and was only able to start his children in life by dint of soliciting favors for them from his well-to-do relatives at home. For Joseph he obtained a small military position, but the lad was no better at improving his opportunities than his father had been and returned to Martinique after a few years a lieutenant of marines—without a place.

When soliciting failed, nothing was left in those days for a nobleman who did not relish work but marriage, and Joseph succeeded, by help of his friends, in making a very good one with Mlle. Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois, whose father was of noble descent and, what was more to the point, was prosperous and of good standing in Martinique. Joseph went to live on a charming plantation belonging to his father-in-law, just back from the sea and near the village of Trois Ilets. Soon after this, war with the English called him into service as a defender of the French West Indies. The war was not long, and for his services he secured a pension of 450 livres (about ninety dollars). It came none too soon, for a passing hurricane devastated the plantation at Trois Ilets in 1766, and drove the family into one of the sugar houses to live. M. de la Pagerie was never able to repair the damages to his plantation done by the storm or build another home for his family. He never, indeed, followed any steady employment, but idled his life away in gaming, intrigue, and soliciting—always in debt, always in bad odor among honest men—his only asset his birth.

But to the happiness of little Josephine it mattered very little in those days whether her home was a sugar-house or a palace, her father an honest man or a sycophant. Her days were spent under the brilliant skies, in the forests or the open fields, chasing birds and butterflies, and gathering the gorgeous tropical flowers which to the end of her life she passionately loved. Almost her only companions were the negroes of the plantations, who gave her willing admiration and obedience. Untaught, unrestrained, idolized by slaves, knowing nothing but the tropical luxury and beauty of the nature about her, she developed like the birds and the negroes, becoming, it is true, a graceful, beautiful little animal, but with hardly more moral sense than they and with even less sense of responsibility.

Josephine was ten years old before it occurred to anybody to send her to school. So far her only instruction had been what little she had gathered from a mother occupied with younger children; from the priest of Trois Ilets, who, it is fair to suppose, must have at least tried to teach her the catechism, and from the curious lore and gossip of the negroes. At ten, however, she was sent to a convent at Fort Royale, where she remained some four years. Here she was taught such rudimentary knowledge as enabled her to read,—if not understand, to write a polite note, to dance,—not very well, to sing, and play the guitar a little. It was a small equipment, but no doubt as good as most young girls of Martinique possessed in that day. Indeed many a noble-born maid in France started out with less in the eighteenth century, and it was quite as much as one would suppose from her position that she would need—more than she used indeed, for little Yeyette, as Josephine was called, if amiable and obedient when she left the convent, was indolent and vain, loving far better her childish play of decorating herself with brilliant flowers and watching her own image in the clear water of the pools on the plantation, than she did books and music; and the loving flattery of her old nurse was dearer to her than any amusement she found in the meager society of the island, where she now was to take her place and, her parents hoped, help retrieve the bad fortunes of the family by a good marriage.

The opportunity came quickly. Josephine had been but a few months out of the convent when one day her father laid before her what must have been a bewildering and, one would suppose, a terrifying proposition—would she like to leave Martinique and go to France, there to marry Alexander de Beauharnais. The boy was not unknown to her. Like herself, he was born in Martinique, and though he had left there when she was only seven years old and he ten, it is not unlikely that she had seen him occasionally at the home of her grandmother who cared for him in the absence of his father and mother in France.

The influence which had led the father of Alexander de Beauharnais to ask for the hand of a daughter of M. de la Pagerie for his son was not altogether creditable. The two families had never known each other until 1757, when M. de Beauharnais came to Martinique as its governor. The elder M. de la Pagerie was not slow in seeking the new governor’s acquaintance and support for his family, for the latter was rich and in favor with the king at Versailles. The relation prospered sufficiently for M. de la Pagerie to secure a place in the household of the governor for one of his daughters. He could have done nothing better for his family. This daughter was not long in gaining an important influence over both M. and Mme. de Beauharnais, and in winning as a husband M. Renaudin, an excellent man and prosperous. This for herself. For her family, she secured so many favors from the governor that it became a matter of serious criticism and finally, added to other indiscretions, led to a divorce between her and M. Renaudin. All this scandal did not influence the governor, however, and when, in 1761, he left Martinique, on account of the dissatisfaction with his administration there, and hurried to France with his wife to make his peace at Versailles, Mme. Renaudin went, too. There she prospered, buying a home and laying aside money. It was M. de Beauharnais’s money, people said. However this may be, it is certain that she exercised great influence over him, that for her he neglected his wife, and that after the latter’s death the friendship or liaison continued until his death.

From all this it will be seen that Mme. Renaudin was a clever woman, intent on making the most out of the one really strong relation she had been able to form in her life. She was clever enough to see, when Alexander was brought to France after his mother’s death, that his love and gratitude would be one of her strongest cards with the father in the future. She set to work to win the boy’s heart, and she succeeded admirably. In his eyes, she took his mother’s place, and her influence over him was almost unlimited.

By the time he was seventeen, Alexander de Beauharnais was a most attractive youth. He had been well educated in the manner of his time, having been, with his elder brother, under the care of an excellent tutor for a number of years, two of which, at least, were passed in Germany. After his brother entered the army, Alexander and his tutor joined the household of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and there studied with the latter’s nephews. In this aristocratic atmosphere he imbibed all the new liberal ideas of the day; he learned, at the same time, the graces of the most exquisite French society and the philosophy of Rousseau. Alexander was seventeen years old when his education was pronounced finished, and a search was made for a place for him suitable to his birth, his relations, and his ambition. Thanks, largely, to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, he was made a lieutenant in the army.

No sooner was his position in the world fixed, than Mme. Renaudin made up her mind that he must marry one of her nieces in Martinique. It mattered not at all that Alexander had not yet thought of marriage. Mme. Renaudin persuaded him it would be a good thing—not a difficult task for her since at marriage the youth was to come into a much larger income than he then enjoyed. Alexander satisfied, she soon persuaded his father to write to M. de la Pagerie. The letter shows the whole situation:—“My children,” wrote M. de Beauharnais, “each enjoy an annual income of 40,000 livres (about $8,000). You are free to give me your daughter to share the fortune of my chevalier. The respect and affection he has for Mme. Renaudin make him eager to marry one of her nieces. You see that I consent freely to his wishes by asking the hand of your second daughter, whose age is more suited to his. If your eldest daughter (Josephine) had been a few years younger, I certainly should have preferred her, as she is pictured quite as favorably to me as the other; but my son, who is only seventeen and a half, thinks that a young lady of fifteen is too near his own age.”

Now, just before this letter reached Martinique, the second daughter of M. de la Pagerie had died of fever. The chance was not to be missed, however, and the father hastened to write to M. de Beauharnais that he might have either of the two daughters remaining; Josephine or Marie, the latter then a child of between eleven and twelve years. From the long correspondence which followed, one gathers that it is the elders in the transaction who really count. Alexander is resigned, little Marie absolutely refuses to leave her mother, and Josephine, of whom little is said, seems to be willing, even eager for the adventure. The upshot of it was that, in October, 1779, M. de la Pagerie sailed for France with Josephine. He arrived at Brest in November, worn out by the passage, and there his sister, Mme. Renaudin, came with Alexander to meet them. If the first impression of his fiancée did not arouse any enthusiasm in Alexander, it at least offered no reason for breaking the engagement. “She is not so pretty as I expected,” he wrote to his father; “but I can assure you that the frankness and sweetness of her character are beyond anything we have been told.”

From Brest the little party travelled together to Paris, where the marriage took place on December 12. The young pair at once went to live with the Marquis de Beauharnais, and that winter Josephine was introduced into the brilliant society of the capital. She seems to have made but a poor impression, for in spite of the 20,000 livres that Mme. Renaudin had spent on her trousseau, she had after all a provincial air which irritated her husband, accustomed as he was to the ease and elegance of aristocratic Paris. What was worse in his eyes, she seemed to have no desire to improve herself on the models he laid down. Poor little Josephine had no head for the exaggerated sentiment, the fine speculations, and the chatter about liberty, nature and the social contract which flowed so glibly from every French tongue in those days. She loved pretty gowns and jewels and childish amusements; above all, she demanded to be loved exclusively and passionately by her handsome young husband. When he scolded her, she cried, and when he devoted himself to brighter women, she was jealous; and so before the first six months of their married life was over, Josephine was seeing many unhappy hours, and the Viscount gladly left her behind when he was called to his regiment. Nevertheless, in his absence, he wrote her long letters, largely of advice on what she should study, and took pains to laugh at her jealousy and her complaints. The birth of their first child, in September, 1781, a boy, who received the name of Eugène, did little to restore peace between the two. The Viscount continued to spend much time away from Paris, either with his regiment or in travel, and when at home, he did not always share his pleasures with his wife. The tactics with which Josephine met his restlessness and his indifference were the worst possible to be used on a man whose passion was for ideas, for elevated sentiments, for bold and brilliant actions—she was amiable and indolent as a kitten until a new neglect came, and then she gave up to a continuous weeping.

One reason, no doubt, of the restlessness of Beauharnais was his failure to advance in his profession as fast as he desired. He had been made a captain, but he wished for a regiment; and when late in 1782 a descent of the English on Martinique threatened, he enlisted for service there. Peace was made between France and England before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself, but he remained in Martinique some time. He had fallen in love there; and unhappily his new mistress had persuaded him that Josephine had had love affairs of her own before she left Martinique to marry him. There was never any proof of the truth of any of the stories she retailed to him; but Beauharnais was glad to have a reason for deserting his wife, and he wrote her a brutal letter, in which he justified his demand for a divorce by the righteous indignation which had seized him when he heard of her follies. The letter reached Josephine in the summer of 1783. In the April before, she had given birth to a daughter, christened Hortense-Eugénie. It was the first word she had received from her husband since her confinement.

Beauharnais reached Paris in October (his mistress had preceded him); and in spite of the efforts of his family and friends, all of whom took Josephine’s part, he secured a separation. She, however, received from the courts the fullest reparation possible, considering the Viscount’s means—a pension for herself and the children; the custody of Eugène, until he was five years old, and permanent possession of Hortense.

Josephine now went to live at the Abbey de Panthemont, a refuge for women of the French nobility who had suffered in one way or another. Here her youth, beauty, sweetness of disposition, and her misfortune made her a favorite with many a noble dame; and she soon learned in this atmosphere more of the ways of aristocratic society than she had learned in all her previous married life.

After nearly a year in the Abbey, Josephine returned to her father-in-law, who was living at Fontainebleau. The life she here took up pleased her very well. She had an income for herself and children of something over $2,000 a year, she was free, she knew many amusing people, she had admirers, many say, lovers,—we should be surprised more if she had not had them than if she had, it was the way of her world. She was devoted to her children, she cared for the Marquis de Beauharnais and Mme. Renaudin in their illnesses, and she corresponded regularly with her husband—whom she never saw—concerning their children. In 1788, she broke the monotony of her life by a trip to Martinique, taking Hortense with her. She remained some two years in the island—a sad two years, for both her father and her sister were very ill at the time, and both died soon after her return to Paris, in the fall of 1790.

CHAPTER II
JOSEPHINE IN THE REVOLUTION—IMPRISONED AT LES CARMES—STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE—MARRIAGE WITH BONAPARTE

When Josephine returned to Paris in 1790, she found the city in full revolution. In the two years she had been gone the States Generals had met, the Bastile had fallen, the National Assembly had begun to make France over. In the front of all this activity moved her husband, Viscount de Beauharnais. Like his patron, the Duke de la Rouchefoucauld, Beauharnais was an ardent advocate of liberty and equality. Sent to the States General by his friends at Blois, he had joined the few noblemen there who in 1789 espoused the cause of the Revolution, and soon was one of the leaders of the faction. Later he was sent to the National Assembly, where he took an active part in framing the constitution. He was a power even in the Jacobin Society.

At this date the revolution was still the fashion among the elegant in Paris, and the Viscount really was one of the most popular and influential young noblemen in the town. His success, the ardor with which he preached the fine theories of the day, perhaps a growing realization that his treatment of his wife was too baldly inconsistent with his profession, softened the Viscount’s heart towards Josephine, and when she returned he went to see her. A kind of reconciliation followed. They continued to live apart, but they saw each other constantly in society. The Viscount no doubt was the more willing to sustain the relation of a good friend and advisor to his wife, when he saw that in the years since their separation she had developed into a most charming woman of the world, and that her beauty, grace, tact, and readiness to oblige had won her a large circle of friends, including many in that aristocratic circle of which he vaunted himself on being a member. This good understanding with Beauharnais did much for Josephine’s peace of mind. It was in a way a victory, and her friends congratulated her. At the same time any honors which came to the Viscount reflected on her, and she steadily became more noticed.

In June, 1791, Beauharnais was elected president of the Constituent Assembly. A few days later, the King and Queen fled to Varennes. As the head of the Assembly, the Viscount was the leader of France for the time. It was he who sat for one hundred and twenty-six and one-half consecutive hours on the bench during the violent session which followed the King’s flight; it was he who questioned the captured King, when he was returned, and directed the distracted proceedings which followed. Indeed, until the dissolution of the body in September, he was one of the most prominent men in France.

Josephine had her share of his glory, and in these months added largely to her circle of acquaintances from the motley crowd which the levelling of things had brought together in French society. She met many of the aristocrats unknown to her until then; but what was vastly more important, she made acquaintances among the “true patriots”, those who had been born in the third estate, and who were already beginning to consider themselves the only part of the population fit to conduct the general regeneration of France. In 1792, war breaking out, Beauharnais went to the front, where he made a respectable record, which he himself reported frequently to the Assembly in glowing letters, filled with good advice to that body. He was steadily advanced until, in May, 1793, he was made general-in-chief of the Army of the North. During all this period Josephine was in Paris or the vicinity, and there were few more active women there than she. Whether advised by her husband or not she had the wit to make the acquaintance of the men of each new party as fast as it came into power. Thus, when the Girondins were at the helm in 1792, she hastened to interview them one by one, to demonstrate to them her devotion to the new civism, to extol the patriotism of her husband, General de Beauharnais. The acquaintance made, she immediately had a favor to ask—this friend was in prison, that one wanted a passport. All through the agitated winter of 1792 and 1793 Josephine was busy getting her friends out of prison and out of France. She seems to have had no fear for herself. As a matter of fact, the men who helped her were so convinced of her simple goodness of heart that they granted her much which would have been denied a more intelligent woman, and they did not question her loyalty. Was she not, too, the wife of General de Beauharnais? That fact did not, however, hold value for many months. Beauharnais’s conduct came into question before the Assembly; he resigned, offering to go into the line. The privilege was denied him, and he was retired from the army. He went at once to his family home near Blois, and threw himself actively into the work of the municipality and of the Jacobins. Josephine, warned of possible danger from her husband’s downfall and fearing the new law against the suspected, decided to leave Paris. She rented, in the winter, a little house at Croissy, not far out of the city, and near many of her friends, and there lived as quietly as she could. One method that she took of showing her devotion to democratic principles was to bind Eugène, who had been in school for several years, as an apprentice to a carpenter; and it is said that Hortense was placed with a dressmaker to learn the trade.

The Viscount escaped arrest until the spring of 1794; then the committee of Public Safety remembered him. There seems to have been no reason for his arrest other than that he was a noble—certainly no man in France had surpassed him in vehement republicanism or had been more fertile in schemes for saving the country. He was taken immediately to Paris, and confined in the prison of les Carmes. A month later, Josephine followed him. Her activity for her friends had continued after the retirement of her husband and the efforts she began at once to make to save him when he was arrested, caused a virtuous patriot to suggest anonymously to the authorities that she too ought to be looked after. She was promptly arrested.

For three months husband and wife lived side by side in that awful prison, the walls of which still bore the red imprints made in the September massacre, and in garden of which blood still oozed, it was believed, from the roots of the tree where murdered men had been stacked up by the score. With them were confined men from every rank of life, princes, merchants, sailors, chimney-sweeps, along with women and children. Almost daily a group was called to die, but their places were quickly filled. The awful tragedy of their lot drew Josephine and her husband no closer together. It is a terrible comment on the times that no one thought it strange that Beauharnais should have paid court here at the gate of death to a beautiful woman, a prisoner like himself, or that Josephine should have been so intimate with General Hoche, also a prisoner, that history has made a record of the fact.

Many efforts were made to save the Viscount and his wife, chiefly under their direction, for they were allowed to see their friends, and also their children. It is quite possible that certain petitions in their favor which have been found in the French archives, bearing the names of Eugène and Hortense, were dictated by the Viscount himself. But every effort was useless, and on July 21 Beauharnais was taken to the Conciergerie: the next day he was tried; the next guillotined. To the end he was brave and self-controlled. In his final words to Josephine, he even charged his death to the plots of the aristocrats, upholding the republic even as it struck him.

None of the Viscount de Beauharnais’s courage was shared by Josephine in her imprisonment. It is true that the majority of the women who suffered death in the French Revolution faced it bravely. Josephine was not of their blood. From the beginning of her imprisonment, she wept continually before everybody, and her favorite occupation was reading her fortune with cards; and yet cowardly as she was, no one was better loved. There was reason enough for this. No one was kinder, no one more willing to do a service, no one had been more active for others than she, when at liberty. All the good will of the prison came out in full when, on August 6, less than a fortnight after her husband’s death, she was set free. There was as general rejoicing as there would have been over the release of a child.

It is not certain through whose influence Josephine obtained her freedom. Mme. Tallien has generally been credited with securing it, but Masson in his delving has found dates which make it improbable that the legend current can be true. According to this, Mme. Tallien (then Mme. de Fontenay) and Josephine were fellow-prisoners, and it was at les Carmes that their friendship began. However, the prison records show that Mme. Tallien was never confined at les Carmes, but at la Petite Force; so that a part at least of the legend is impossible. That she may have interested herself in Josephine’s behalf is quite possible, even probable. She may have known Mme. de Beauharnais before her imprisonment. It is well known that, as soon as she received her own freedom she became an ardent advocate of that clemency which was made possible by the fall of Robespierre on the ninth Thermidor and that she rescued many persons. She may very well have included Josephine among the first of those she sought to save. Her task in this case would not have been difficult, for Josephine was known to most of the members of the Terrorist Government and was probably on terms of intimacy with some of them. At all events, Josephine was set free on August 6, and she immediately went to Croissy to pass the autumn.

The problems which now confronted Josephine were serious enough for the most practical and resourceful of women. The chaos in French business affairs made it very difficult for her to get her hand on money coming to her. Her husband’s property was tied up by his death so that she could realize nothing from it, and the value of what she did secure of her income must have been sadly reduced by the general depreciation which had resulted from the Reign of Terror and from the war, and by the exorbitant prices of even the commonest necessaries of life—bread at this time was over twenty francs a pound. Her situation was still more difficult because the personal property of herself, her children, and husband was all in the hands of the authorities. She had no linen, furniture, silver, clothing, nothing needful in her daily life. To keep house in the simplest way, she had to beg and borrow, and it was many months before she was able to secure her own articles of clothing and her household furniture.

With two children to care for and with a town apartment and a country cottage on her hands, she was in a very difficult position.

That Josephine was able to keep her homes, care for her children, and retain her position in the society of the Directory was due to the friendship and protection of two men, Hoche and Barras. Hoche had been liberated from les Carmes before Josephine, and put in charge of an army, and he at once took Eugène on his staff, thus freeing Josephine’s mind of that care. For a few months she managed by diligent borrowing and mortgaging to keep things going. In all of her efforts to repair her fortune and secure to her children the estate of Beauharnais, she enlisted her friends, especially Mme. Tallien, who just then was at the height of her power. The two became very intimate, and the Viscountess de Beauharnais was soon one of the women oftenest seen at the functions given by the members of the Directory as well as at all the more intimate gatherings of that society. She became as great a favorite among the dissipated and prodigal company as she had been among the aristocratic ladies of the Abbey de Panthemont or in the motley company at les Carmes. It was to be expected that she could not long be an intimate of Mme. Tallien’s salon without finding a protector. She found him in Barras, a member of the Directory, its most influential member in fact, a prince of corruption, but a man of elegance, and ability.

It is probable that the liaison with Barras began in 1795, for in August of that year Josephine took a little house in Paris, furnishing it largely from the apartment in town which she had kept so long. She put Hortense in Mme. Campan’s school, and taking Eugène from Hoche sent him to college. She entertained constantly in her new home, and once a week at least received Barras and his friends at her country place at Croissy. It was an open secret that the money for all this was supplied by Barras.

Although Barras was himself notoriously corrupt, he was a man of elegant and highly cultivated tastes, and he always made strenuous efforts to keep his inner circle exclusive. He wished only persons of wit, elegance, and ease about him, when he was at leisure, and as a rule he allowed no others. Now and then, however, the necessities of politics brought into his house a man unused either to its polite refinements or its elegant dissipations. Such a man was admitted in the fall of 1795—a young Corsican, a member of the army who had distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon, and who had recently put Barras and the whole government, in fact, under obligations. The man’s name was Bonaparte—Napoleon Bonaparte. He had come to Paris in the spring of 1795, under orders to join the Western Army, but had fallen into disgrace because he refused to obey. He succeeded, however, through Barras, who had known him at Toulon, in making an impression at the War Office. He was more than an ordinary man, the authorities who listened to his talk and examined his plans of campaign said. A chance came in October to try his metal as a commanding officer. The sections of Paris, dissatisfied with the Convention, had planned an attack for a certain night. The Committee of Defence asked Bonaparte to take command of the guard which was to defend the Tuileries, where the Convention sat. The result was a quick and effectual repulse of the attack of the sections, and Bonaparte was rewarded the next day by being made a general-of-division.

One of the first acts to follow the attack on the Convention was a law ordering that all citizens should be disarmed. Now, Josephine had in her apartment the sword of General de Beauharnais, and in obedience to the new law she at once carried it to the proper authority. Eugène, knowing her intention, hastened there too, and passionately protested against his father’s sword being given up. He would die first, he declared, with boyish vehemence. His youth (he was but fourteen), his genuine emotion touched the commissioner, who hesitated and finally said that Eugène might go to the general in charge of the section, the newly made General Bonaparte, and present his petition. The boy hastened to the General, and with shining eyes and trembling lips, begged that his father’s sword might be returned. Bonaparte, moved by the lad’s earnestness and agitation, ordered that his request be granted. Mme. de Beauharnais, on hearing the story from Eugène, went to the General’s office to thank him. The interview ended by her inviting him to call upon her. It is probable that Barras had felt it wise to admit Bonaparte to his inner circle at about this time, and before long the young general was on good terms with the entire society.

At the time when Bonaparte began to frequent the houses of Barras and Josephine he was, beside most of the men and women he met there—certainly beside Barras and Josephine—a paragon of virtue. They were disciples of pleasure; he of the strenuous life. Up to this time the pleasures of the world had never invited him. He had looked on them as a young philosopher might, bent on seeing and understanding all, but he had never sought them, never been allured by them. To make a place and name for himself was all that Napoleon Bonaparte, up to this time, had desired.

Not only did he here, for the first time, come into a circle which cultivated pleasure as an end; but here, for the first time, he saw the refinements, the luxury, the delights of highly developed society. Beautiful, graceful, and witty women he had never known before; he had never set foot before in rooms such as these in which he found Josephine, Mme. Tallien, and Barras. Dinners like these they offered him were an amazement. Not only was he astonished by his surroundings, he was intoxicated by the attention he received. That Josephine, who seemed to him the perfect type of the grande dame, should invite him to her home, write him flattering little notes when his visits were delayed, admire his courage, listen to his impetuous talk, prophesy a great future for him, excited his imagination and hope as nothing ever had before. A month had not passed before he was paying her an impassioned court. That she was six years his senior and a widow with two children; that she had no certain income and was of another rank; that he had nothing but his “cloak and sword” and was hardly started in his career, though with a mother and several brothers and sisters looking to him to see them through life—these and all other practical considerations seem to have been thrust aside. He loved Josephine and meant to marry her. All through the fall and winter of 1795 and 1796 he was at her side pressing his suit.

But Josephine, though pleased by Napoleon’s devotion, and certainly encouraging him, hesitated. Certainly marriage with the young Corsican was a venture at which a more courageous woman than she might have hesitated, and she, poor woman, had had enough of ventures. Every one so far had ended in disaster—her marriage had ended in separation, her reconciliation with her husband in his death, her property had been lost in a revolution. All she asked of life was an opportunity to settle Eugène and Hortense, and freedom and money enough to be gay. Could she expect this from a marriage with Bonaparte? She herself analyzed her feelings admirably in a letter to a friend:

I am urged, my dear, to marry again by the advice of all my friends (I may almost say), by the commands of my aunt, and the prayers of my children. Why are you not here to help me by your advice on this important occasion, and to tell me whether I ought or ought not to consent to a union, which certainly seems calculated to relieve me from the discomfort of my present situation? Your friendship would render you clear-sighted to my interests, and a word from you would suffice to bring me to a decision.

Among my visitors you have seen General Bonaparte; he is the man who wishes to become a father to the orphans of Alexander de Beauharnais and a husband to his widow.

“Do you love him?” is naturally your first question.

My answer is, “perhaps—No.”

“Do you dislike him?”

“No,” again; but the sentiments I entertain towards him are of that lukewarm kind which true devotees think worst of all in matters of religion. Now, love being a sort of religion, my feelings ought to be very different from what they really are. This is the point on which I want your advice, which would fix the wavering of my irresolute disposition. To come to a decision has always been too much for my Creole inertness, and I find it easier to obey the wishes of others.

I admire the General’s courage; the extent of his information on every subject on which he converses; his shrewd intelligence, which enables him to understand the thoughts of others before they are expressed; but I confess I am somewhat fearful of that control which he seems anxious to exercise over all about him. There is something in his scrutinizing glance that cannot be described; it awes even our directors, therefore it may well be supposed to intimidate a woman. He talks of his passion for me with a degree of earnestness which renders it impossible to doubt his sincerity; yet this very circumstance, which you would suppose likely to please me, is precisely that which has withheld me from giving the consent which I have often been on the very point of uttering.

My spring of life is past. Can I, then, hope to preserve for any length of time that ardor of affection which in the General amounts almost to madness? If his love should cool, as it certainly will, after our marriage, will he not reproach me for having prevented him from forming a more advantageous connection? What, then, shall I say? What shall I do? I may shut myself up and weep. Fine consolation, truly! methinks I hear you say. But unavailing as I know it is, weeping is, I assure you, my only consolation whenever my poor heart receives a wound. Write me quick, and pray scold me if you think me wrong. You know everything is welcome that comes from you.

Barras assures me if I marry the General, he will get him appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy. This favor, though not yet granted, occasions some murmuring among Bonaparte’s brother officers. When speaking to me yesterday on the subject, the General said.—

“Do they think I cannot get forward without their patronage. One day or other they will all be too happy if I grant them mine. I have a good sword by my side, which will carry me on.”

What do you think of this self-confidence? Does it not savor of excessive vanity? A general of brigade to talk of patronizing the chiefs of the Government? It is very ridiculous! Yet I know not how it happens, his ambitious spirit sometimes wins upon me so far that I am almost tempted to believe in the practicability of any project he takes into his head—and who can foresee what he may attempt?

It is probable that, if it had not been for Barras, Josephine would not have consented, for many of her friends advised against the marriage. Barras urged it, however. He says in explanation, with the brutal frankness for which his memoirs are distinguished, that he was “tired and bored” with her. She, no doubt, felt that Barras’s protection was uncertain and that it would be better for her not to offend him.

At last Barras and Bonaparte between them overcame Josephine’s indecision, and on March 8, 1796, the marriage contract was signed. Barras and Tallien were the two chief witnesses at the civil ceremony which took place the next day. The religious marriage was dispensed with.

CHAPTER III
BONAPARTE GOES TO ITALY—JOSEPHINE AT MILAN—TRIUMPHAL TOUR IN ITALY—BONAPARTE LEAVES FOR EGYPT

Just a week before the marriage of Napoleon with Josephine he had been appointed general-in-chief of the Army of Italy, and two days after the marriage he left for his command. Josephine remained in Paris, at her home in the Rue Chantereine, a little relieved, probably, at the departure of her tempestuous lover. Certainly she was not sufficiently in love to be able to keep pace with the ardent letters which he sent her from every post on his route. She read them, to be sure; even showed them to her friends, pronouncing them drôle; but her answers equalled them neither in number nor in warmth. Napoleon’s suffering and reproaches and prayers disturbed her peace. She could not love like this. Soon he began to beg her to come to Italy. The campaign was well started; he was winning victories. There was no reason why she should not join him; or come at least to Nice—to Milan. “You will come,” he begs, “and quick. If you hesitate, if you delay, you will find me ill. Fatigue and your absence are too much for me.... Take wings, come—come!”

But Josephine did not want to leave Paris. Particularly now when she was reaping the first fruits of her young husband’s glory in an homage such as she had never known, but of which there is no doubt she had dreamed from childhood. Napoleon’s victories had driven the Parisians wild with joy, and they asked nothing better than to adore the wife of the hero of the campaign. Scarcely two months, in fact, had passed, after leaving Paris before Napoleon sent back, by his brother Joseph and his aide Junot, twenty-one flags taken from the enemy. They were received at a public session of the Directory. Josephine was present with Mme. Tallien, and when the two beautiful women, accompanied by Junot, left the Luxembourg, where the presentation had taken place, there was such a demonstration as Paris had not seen over a woman in many a day. “Look,” they cried, “it is his wife! Isn’t she beautiful! Long live General Bonaparte! Long live the Citizeness Bonaparte! Long live Notre Dame des Victoires!”

New triumphs followed, and to celebrate them there was held a grand fête on May 29. There were balls at the Luxembourg, gala nights at the theaters. And everywhere Josephine, the wife of the conquering general, was queen. And yet almost every night, when she returned from opera or ball, she found awaiting her a passionate appeal from Bonaparte to come to Italy. Several weeks she put him off, she pleaded the hardship of the trip, the dangers and discomforts she might have to undergo there, a hundred excuses; and Bonaparte, in reply, only begged the more fiercely that she come.

At last she could resist no longer, but she took no pains to conceal her sorrow at going. “Her chagrin was extreme, when she saw there was no longer any way of escaping,” Arnault says, “she thought more of what she was going to leave than what she was going to find. She would have given the palace at Milan which had been prepared for her, she would have given all the palaces of the world, for her house in the Rue Chantereine.... She started for Italy from the Luxembourg, where she had supped with some friends. Poor woman, she burst into tears and sobbed as if she was going to punishment—she who was going to reign.”

It was the end of June before Josephine arrived in Milan. The palace which awaited her was the princely home of the Duke de Serbelloni;—the society the choicest of Italy. She at once found herself literally living like a princess. Unhappily for her, however, there was no opportunity to remain long quietly at Milan and enjoy the pleasures open to her. Bonaparte was in active campaign—unable to stay but a couple of days after her arrival, and he soon began to beg that she join him in the field. At the end of July, she did go to Brescia, where she experienced a series of exciting adventures. The Austrians were pressing close on the French—closer than Napoleon realized; twice he and she narrowly escaped capture together; once she was under fire. Finally Bonaparte was obliged to send her, by way of Bologna and Ferrara to Lucques, a journey that she made in safety, but in tears.

Henceforth Josephine had an excellent reason for not joining her husband in the field. And Napoleon did not ask her to do so. All he asked now was letters, letters, letters. “Your health and your face are never out of my mind. I cannot be at peace until your letters are received. I wait them impatiently. You cannot conceive my unrest.” And again, “I do not love you at all; on the contrary, I detest you. You are a wretched, awkward, stupid little thing. You do not write me any more at all; you do not love your husband. You know the pleasure that your letters give me, and yet write me not more than six lines and that by chance. What are you doing all day long, Madame? But seriously, I am very much disturbed, my dear, at not hearing from you. Write me four pages quickly of those kind of things which fill my heart with pleasure.” A few days later he writes, “No letters from you. Truly that disturbs me. I am told you are well and that you have even been to Lake Como. I look impatiently every day for the courier who will bring me news of you.” And again, “I write you very often, my dear, and you write me so rarely.” And so it went on through the entire summer and fall of 1796. While she received at Milan the honors due the wife of a conqueror who held the fate of states in his hands, he in the field exhausted himself in a frenzied struggle for victory—not victory for himself, so he told Josephine, and so for a time, perhaps, he persuaded himself; but victory because it pleased her that he win it; honor because she set store by it; otherwise, said he, “I should leave all to throw myself at your feet.”

All this impetuous passion wearied Josephine more and more. No response was awakened in her heart. That she was proud of his love, there is no doubt. She told everybody of his devotion, as well she might: it was her passport to power. But she could not answer it in kind, and she found excuses for her neglect in her health, which was not good at this time, and in the social requirements of her brilliant and conspicuous position, and frequently, too, in the fact that the life at Milan, gay as it was, did not please her. She was homesick for Paris. “Monsieur de Serbelloni will tell you, my dear aunt,” she wrote early in September, “how I have been received in Italy, fêted wherever I have gone, all the princes of Italy entertaining me, even the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Ah, well! I would rather be a simple private individual in France; I do not like the honors of this country, I am bored to death. It is true that my health does much to make me sad; I am not well at all. If happiness could bring health, I ought to be well. I have the kindest husband that one could possibly find; I have not time to want anything; my will is his; he is on his knees before me all day long, as if I were a divinity. One could not have a better husband. M. de Serbelloni will tell you how much I am loved; he writes often to my children and is very fond of them.”

JOSEPHINE.

By J. B. Isabey. (Collection of M. Edmond Taigny.) This portrait in crayon, lightly touched with color, was executed at Malmaison, probably in the course of the year 1798. It is very little known. Isabey, whose pencil was quick and sure, must have requested Josephine to pose for a few minutes after a walk in the park. This sketch was given to M. Taigny by Isabey himself.—A. D.

Not only did Josephine neglect to write to this “best husband in the world”, as she herself called Bonaparte, but she spent many hours at Milan in conspicuous flirtations with young officers who were glad enough to pay her court. Vague rumors of these flirtations came to Napoleon’s ears, no doubt, though it is certain he thought little of them. There are references in his letters which might be attributed to jealousy, but it is clear that his confidence in Josephine at this time was such that a denial from her, an aggrieved look, a tear of reproach, made him sue for pardon and forget his fears.

Aside from her carelessness about writing to him, the gravest complaint that he had against her was her willingness to receive valuable gifts. The treasures of Italy were open to the French, and Bonaparte was sending quantities of rare art objects to Paris; but he declared it highly improper that any of these things or any private gifts should go to him or his suite. Josephine, however, had no scruples about gifts, and accepted gladly the jewels, pictures, and bibelots which were sent her. More than one scene resulted from this indiscretion, but it always ended in her keeping the treasure. She learned before she had been long in Italy not to tell the General what had been given her, or if he accused her of receiving gifts, to deny it.

But unhappy as Josephine made Bonaparte in his absence by her neglect and her flirtations, she more than compensated for it by her amiability when he returned. He had reason soon, too, to see that by her tact she did much to help his cause in Italy. She was the embodiment of grace and cheerfulness, she was familiar with the ways of good society, she had tact with the republican element of the country, which prided itself on its ideals and patriotism, and she appeased the nobles, who felt that she was one of them. Napoleon had reason to say of Josephine’s influence in Italy what he said later of her influence in Paris—that without it, he could never have accomplished what he did. Her value in his plans was particularly evident in the spring and summer of 1797, which they passed together, partly at the palace of Serbelloni and partly at the chateau of Montebello. Their life at this time was rather that of two crowned heads than that of a general of an army and his wife. They lived in the greatest state, protected by strict etiquette and surrounded by the officers of the army of Italy and representatives from Austria and the Italian states. Audiences with the General were daily sought by the greatest men of Italy. In all this pageant of power Josephine moved as naturally and easily as if she had been born to it. On every side she won friends; no one came to the chateau who did not go away to praise her good taste, her simplicity, her anxiety to please. She never interfered in politics either, they said, though she was ever willing to help a friend in securing the General’s favor; and all this praise was deserved. Josephine’s good will was born of a kind heart. It was not merely the complacency of indolence; she had no malice, she felt kindly toward the whole world, she had all her life been willing to exhaust every resource in her power for her friends. She was willing to do so now, and she remained of this disposition to the end of her life. Such a character makes a man or woman loved in any age, in any society, whatever his faults. It made Josephine loved particularly in her age and her society, where genuine kindness was rare and where her peculiar faults—vices, perhaps one should say—were readily overlooked, particularly if they were handled discreetly.

The fall of 1797, Napoleon passed in negotiations with Austria. For a time Josephine was with him. Then restless and eager to see Italy, she left him in October and went to Venice, where a splendid reception was given her. From there she travelled as her fancy dictated in Northern Italy. Everywhere she went she was received royally, and loaded with gifts. She did not reach Paris until the first of January, 1798, nearly a month after Napoleon.

She came back to find her husband the most talked of man in Europe. She found, too, that her return was eagerly looked for because the General absolutely refused to be lionized—even to appear at public functions, without her. Her coming was thus the signal for a round of gaieties, where, it must be confessed, Bonaparte played rather the part of a bear. He would not leave Josephine’s side; he wanted to talk with her alone, and he openly declared that he would rather stay at home with her than go to the most brilliant reception Paris could offer. “I love my wife,” he said seriously to those who chaffed him or remonstrated. With all his dreams of ambition, it is certain that she filled his life as completely now as she had nearly two years before, when he married her. As for Josephine herself, she seems to have been completely satisfied now that she was in Paris. She was the centre of an admiring circle; she was loaded daily with presents, not only from cities and statesmen, but from shop-keepers and manufacturers, eager to have her approval, to use her name. Not since her marriage had she been so contented.

This satisfactory state of affairs was interrupted in May, when Bonaparte sailed for Egypt. Josephine went to Toulon to see him off, promising that she would soon follow him, and then retired to the springs at Plombières for a season. It was fall before she returned to Paris. When she did return, it was to plunge into a round of frivolity and extravagance. The most conspicuous of her indiscretions was the attentions she accepted from a young man—Hippolyte Charles—a former adjutant to one of Napoleon’s generals. She had known him before she went to Italy; indeed he had been in her party when she left for Milan in 1796. At Milan he had paid her so assiduous court and had been so encouraged that the news came to Napoleon’s ears, and Charles was suddenly dismissed from the service. He had found a place in Paris—through Josephine’s influence, the gossips said. At all events, this young man reappeared now that Bonaparte was in Egypt, and became a constant visitor at her house; and when, the summer following, she bought Malmaison and took possession, Charles was her first guest. “You had better get a divorce from Bonaparte and marry Charles,” some of her plain-speaking friends told her.

When people as little scrupulous as Josephine herself reproved her, it can be imagined what the effect would be on the Bonaparte family, most of whom were now established in or near Paris. They had never cared for Josephine, and never had had much to do with her. Lucien and Joseph were the only members of the family who had seen her before her marriage to Napoleon, and to all of them the marriage came as a shock, Bonaparte not having announced it even to his mother. They looked upon her as an interloper—one who might deprive them of some of the rewards of Bonaparte’s genius: these rewards the entire family seem to have felt from the first belonged to them and to them alone. No one of them had had, until this winter, much opportunity to study Josephine. They were irritated to find her so evidently a woman of higher rank than themselves; they were disgusted at her extravagance and indiscretion. Josephine, on her side, took little trouble to win them. After all, they were only Corsicans, and not amusing like Napoleon. No doubt, she felt a little towards them as Alexander de Beauharnais had felt towards her when she first arrived in Paris—an untrained little islander, the province speaking in every gesture. To Josephine’s credit, let it be said, she never was guilty of trying to undermine the place of his family in her husband’s affections; she never opposed their advancement; she always, to the best of her ability, aided Napoleon in any plans he had for them. It is much more than can be said of the Bonapartes’ attitude towards the Beauharnais.

Shocking to the Bonapartes as were Josephine’s flirtations, they looked on her extravagance with even more horror. To Madame Bonaparte, especially, it was an unforgivable sin; and, in fact, extravagance could scarcely have gone farther. Bonaparte was not rich. Indeed he prided himself on having returned from Italy poor. But he had left a fair income in his brother Joseph’s hands—a part of which was to go to Josephine. She, in utter disregard of the amount of this income, lived in luxury, entertaining royally, and buying prodigally everything that pleased her fancy. To meet her pressing demands, she borrowed right and left. Finally, in the summer of 1799, she purchased Malmaison, a country seat at which she and Napoleon had looked before he left for Egypt. The purchasing price was about $50,000, and she had to borrow $3,000 for the advance payment. She went immediately to the place, running in debt for repairs and furnishings.

Joseph Bonaparte was deeply disgusted by Josephine’s reckless expenditures, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she was able to get any money from him. He was the more disobliging because he and other members of the family believed that they now had proofs which surely would convince Napoleon that Josephine was faithless and would cause him to secure a divorce as soon as he returned from Italy. And, indeed their cause had already advanced in Egypt far beyond their knowledge. Joseph had, before Napoleon’s sailing, put such suspicions of Josephine’s infidelity into his mind and referred him to such members of his own staff for proof, that the General once at sea had investigated the matter and become convinced of the truth of the charges. The revelation caused him weeks of gloom. There was nothing left to live for, he wrote Joseph. At twenty-nine he was disillusioned. Honors wearied him, glory was colorless, sentiment dead, men without interest. He should return to France and retire to the country. But he could not abandon his post at once, and as the weeks went on recklessness succeeded to gloom. If his wife was faithless, why should he be faithful? From that time Josephine’s exclusive sway was broken. The man who had for her sake spurned all women rode openly through the streets of Cairo with a pretty little madame whose husband had been sent suddenly to France. The glory of love was gone forever for Bonaparte, and poor Josephine had lost the rarest jewel of her life. Perhaps the saddest of it all was that she had never realized what she possessed, never knew her loss.

How much Josephine knew of her husband’s change of feeling towards her is uncertain. There is a letter in existence purporting to be hers, written at this time in answer to accusations which Napoleon had made from Egypt, in which she repels the charges with virtuous indignation and attributes them to her enemies, presumably the Bonapartes:—

It is impossible, General (she writes), that the letter I have just received comes from you? I can scarcely credit it when I compare that letter with others now before me, to which your love imparts so many charms! My eyes, indeed, would persuade me that your hand traced these lines; but my heart refuses to believe that a letter from you could ever have caused the mortal anguish I experience on perusing these expressions of your displeasure, which afflict me the more when I consider how much pain they must have cost you.

I know not what I have done to provoke some malignant enemy to destroy my peace by disturbing yours; but certainly a powerful motive must influence some one in continually renewing calumnies against me, and giving them a sufficient appearance of probability to impose on the man who has hitherto judged me worthy of his affection and confidence. These two sentiments are necessary to my happiness, and if they are to be so soon withdrawn from me, I can only regret that I was ever blest in possessing them or knowing you....

Instead of listening to traducers, who, for reasons which I cannot explain, seek to disturb our happiness, why do you not silence them by enumerating the benefits you have bestowed on a woman whose heart could never be reproached with ingratitude? The knowledge of what you have done for my children would check the malignity of these calumniators, for they would then see that the strongest link of my attachment for you depends on my character as a mother. Your subsequent conduct, which has claimed the admiration of all Europe, could have no other effect than to make me adore the husband who gave me his hand when I was poor and unfortunate. Every step you take adds to the glory of the name I bear; yet this is the moment that has been selected for persuading you that I no longer love you! Surely nothing can be more wicked and absurd than the conduct of those who are about you, and are jealous of your marked superiority!

Yes, I still love you, and no less tenderly than ever. Those who allege the contrary know that they speak falsely. To those very persons I have frequently written to enquire about you and to recommend them to console you by their friendship for the absence of her who is your best and truest friend.

Yet what has been the conduct of the men in whom you repose confidence, and on whose testimony you form so unjust an opinion of me? They conceal from you every circumstance calculated to alleviate the anguish of our separation, and they seek to fill your mind with suspicion in order to drive you from a country with which they are dissatisfied. Their object is to make you unhappy. I see this plainly, though you are blind to their perfidious intentions. Being no longer their equal, you have become their enemy, and every one of your victories is a fresh ground of envy and hatred.

I know their intrigues, and I disdain to avenge myself by naming the men whom I despise, but whose valor and talents may be useful to you in the great enterprise which you have so propitiously commenced. When you return, I will unmask these enemies of your glory—but no; the happiness of seeing you again will banish from my recollection the misery they are endeavoring to inflict upon me, and I shall think only of what they have done to promote the success of your projects.

I acknowledge that I see a great deal of company; for every one is eager to compliment me on your success, and I confess I have not resolution to close my door against those who speak of you. I also confess that a great portion of my visitors are gentlemen. Men understand your bold projects better than women, and they speak with enthusiasm of your glorious achievements, while my female friends only complain of you for having carried away their husbands, brothers or fathers. I take no pleasure in their society if they do not praise you; yet there are some among them whose hearts and understandings claim my highest regard because they entertain sincere friendship for you. In this number I may distinguish Mesdames d’Aiguillon, Tallien, and my aunt. They are almost constantly with me, and they can tell you, ungrateful as you are, whether I have been coquetting with everybody. These are your words, and they would be hateful to me were I not certain that you have disavowed them and are sorry for having written them....

I sometimes receive honors here which cause me no small degree of embarrassment. I am not accustomed to this sort of homage, and I see it is displeasing to our authorities, who are always suspicious and fearful of losing their newly-gotten power. Never mind them, you will say; and I should not, but that I know they will try to injure you, and I cannot endure the thought of contributing in any way to those feelings of enmity which your triumphs sufficiently account for. If they are envious now, what will they be when you return crowned with fresh laurels? Heavens knows to what lengths their malignity will then carry them! But you will be here, and then nothing can vex me....

For my part, my time is occupied in writing to you, hearing your praises, reading the journals, in which your name appears in every page, thinking of you, looking forward to the time when I may see you hourly, complaining of your absence, and longing for your return; and when my task is ended, I begin it over again. Are all these proofs of indifference? You will never have any others from me, and if I receive no worse from you, I shall have no great reason to complain, in spite of the ill-natured stories I hear about a certain lady in whom you are said to take a lively interest. But why should I doubt you? You assure me that you love me, and, judging of your heart by my own, I believe you.

Josephine seems not to have doubted her power to propitiate Napoleon on his return. She did not count, however, on his brothers seeing him before she did; but so it turned out. Bonaparte, with an eye to effect, landed unexpectedly in France on October 6, 1799. The Bonaparte brothers, as soon as they heard of his arrival, hurried southward without notifying Josephine, whose first knowledge of his coming was while she was dining out on October 10. She immediately started to meet him, but took the wrong route. Returning to Paris alone, she found that her husband had reached home twelve hours ahead of her.

Hastening to the little house in the rue de la Victoire,—a street that had latterly changed its name in honor of him; and the house in which she had first received him, which he had bought subsequently because of its associations, and which he had declared, after his disillusion in Egypt, that he should always keep,—Josephine found Napoleon locked in his room. Joseph and Lucien had improved their opportunity, and wrung from him a promise to see his wife no more—to secure a divorce. Throwing herself on her knees before the door, Josephine wept and begged for hours, until the door opened; and then, aided by Hortense and Eugène, she sued for pardon. The power she still had over the man was too great for him to resist long. The next morning, when the Bonaparte brothers called, they found a reconciled household.

How complete the reconciliation was they realized when they saw Napoleon paying the $200,000 and more due at Malmaison and settling the debts to servants, merchants, jewelers, caterers, florists, liverymen, everybody, in fact, which Josephine had contracted right and left in his absence. Not only did he pay her obligations with little more than a grimace, but he entered heartily into her plans for repairing and beautifying their new home. The two appeared constantly together in public, where their evident happiness coming so close upon the rumors of a divorce, caused endless gossip.

CHAPTER IV
BONAPARTE IS MADE FIRST CONSUL—JOSEPHINE’S TACT IN PUBLIC LIFE—HER PERSONAL CHARM—MALMAISON

Josephine realized fully that if her victory over her brothers-in-law was complete, it could endure only during her own good behavior—that, if she ever again gave them reason for complaining of her conduct, she probably would have to suffer the full penalty of her wrongdoing. She must have realized, too, that the supreme power she had once exercised over Napoleon was at an end, that he could get along very well without her. The absorbing passion of the Italian campaign had become the comfortable, unexacting affection which would have been so welcome to her in 1796. The change, if more peaceable, brought its dangers, she well knew. It meant that if she kept him now, she not only must be irreproachable in her life, but she must foster his affection by her devotion, amuse him, stand by him in his ambition; she must be the suitor now. There was no question in her mind that he was worth it. If there ever had been, the wonderful enthusiasm of the people on his return from Egypt would have dissipated the doubt. Her course was evident, and she adopted it immediately, and applied herself to it with more seriousness than she ever had given to anything before in her life. Indeed, the only serious purpose consistently followed which is to be found in Josephine’s life is the resolve taken after the Egyptian campaign, unconsciously, no doubt, to keep what remained to her of Napoleon’s affection, to make herself necessary to him.

An opportunity to show him how useful she might be in his career came very soon. The coup d’état of the 18th and 19th Brumaire (9th and 10th November, 1799) resulted in Napoleon’s being made First Consul in the new government which took the place of the Directory. The Bonapartes went at once to the Luxembourg Palace to live, and remained there until February, when the Tuileries was made the Government House. As the First Lady of the Land, Josephine was in a position where she could be an infinite harm or help to her husband. Any flippancy, self-will, or malice in managing the crowds of people she saw from day to day would have been fatal both to her and to Napoleon. The tact she showed from the first in playing the hostess of France was exquisite. That a woman who for thirty-seven years had been the plaything of fate, who had shown no moral principle or high purpose in meeting the crises of her life, whose chief aim had always been pleasure, and whose only weapons had been her sweet temper and her tears, should preside over the official society of a newly-formed government and not only make no mistakes, but every day knit the discordant elements of that society more close, is one of the marvels of feminine intuition and adaptability.

No doubt but that with Josephine her perfect goodness of heart was at the bottom of her tact. She had no malice, she much preferred to see even her enemies happy rather than miserable, and though she might weep and complain of their unkindness, if she had an opportunity she would do them a favor. Her goodness impressed everybody. The most disgruntled, after passing a few moments with the wife of the First Consul, went away mollified, if not satisfied; and a second visit usually satisfied them. She flattered the rough soldiers, when Napoleon, always eager to show attention to the army, presented them to her, by her knowledge of their deeds. She softened the suspicions of the radical Republicans by her affectation of sans-culottism and her familiarity with the members of the Girondin and Terrorist governments. She aroused hope among the aristocrats that she would secure them favors from the government—was she not one of themselves? Was not her first husband a viscount and a victim of the guillotine. She really wanted everybody to be pleased, and by her mere amiability she came as near as a human being can to pleasing everybody.

She was wise, too, in her dealings with people. She never pretended to know anything about politics—that was Napoleon’s business; but if she could do them a favor, she would; and straightway she wrote a note or took her carriage to intercede, personally, for them. If she was refused, she explained with much pains just why it was; if she succeeded, she was as pleased as a child. Hundreds of her little notes soliciting favors, are to be seen in the collections in Europe. Napoleon allowed her a free hand in this matter, for he appreciated how purely it was good will, not any desire to mix in politics, which animated her. He realized, too, how valuable to the First Consul it was to have some one who always made a friend, whether she secured a favor or not.

No doubt much of Josephine’s influence was due to her personal charm. She was never strictly a beautiful woman, but her grace was so exquisite, her toilet so perfect, her expression so winning, that defects were forgotten in the delight of her personality. Madame de Remusat, in describing Josephine, says that without being beautiful, she possessed a peculiar charm. Her features were fine and harmonious; her expression was pleasant; her mouth, which was small, concealed skilfully her poor teeth; her complexion, which was rather dark, was helped out by rouge and powder; her form was perfect, her limbs being supple and delicate, and every movement of her body was easy. “I never knew anyone,” Mme. de Remusat writes, “to whom one could apply more appropriately La Fontaine’s verse, ‘Et la grâce, plus belle encore que la beauté.’”

One of Josephine’s greatest charms was her voice: it was soft, well modulated, and very musical; it always put Napoleon under a peculiar spell. She was an excellent reader, and seemed never to tire of reading aloud. In the intimacy of their apartments she spent much time reading aloud to Napoleon, and often, when he was sleepless after a hard day, she would sit by his bed with a book until he fell asleep. Many of those who heard her read have said that the charm of her voice was such that one forgot entirely what she was saying and listened simply to the music of the sound.

Constant says, in describing Josephine: “She was of medium height and of a rarely perfect form; her movements were supple and light, making her walk something fairylike, without preventing a certain majesty becoming to a sovereign; her face changed with every thought of her soul, and never lost its charming sweetness; in pleasure as in sorrow she was always beautiful to look upon. There never was a woman who demonstrated better than she that ‘the eyes are the mirror of the soul;’ hers were of a deep blue, and almost always half closed by her long lids, which were slightly arched and bordered with the most beautiful lashes in the world. Her hair was very beautiful, long and soft; she liked to dress it in the morning with a red Madras handkerchief, which gave her a Creole air, most piquant to see.”

JOSEPHINE AT MALMAISON.

By Prud’hon. This charming portrait, which is one of Prud’hon’s most successful works, and also one of the most graceful and faithful likenesses of Josephine, was doubtless executed at the same time as Isabey’s picture of Napoleon wandering, a solitary dreamer, in the long alleys at Malmaison (1798). (See page [88].) Prud’hon shows us Josephine in the garden of the château she loved so well, and in which she spent the happiest moments of her life, before seeking it as a final refuge in her grief and despair. The empress presents a full-length portrait, turned to the left; she is seated on a stone bench amid the groves of the park, in an attitude of reverie, and wears a white décolletté robe embroidered in gold. A crimson shawl is draped round her.—A. D.

Josephine showed her wisdom, from the beginning of the Consulate, in yielding to Napoleon’s wishes about whom she should receive. The First Consul’s notions of official society were severe and well-matured. Nobody should be admitted that did not support his government. At least, if they criticised, they must do so quietly. The army must be honored there before all. The Republicans must be made to feel, of course, that this was their society. The aristocrats must be encouraged just as far as it could be done without giving the people alarm. A fusion of all elements was really what he aimed at, but nobody dared mention that fact. Josephine’s intuition seems to have guided her almost unerringly through the difficult task of giving just the right amount of encouragement and attention to each.

Above all, in this new society there must be no irregularities, no scandals. The government must be respectable. There should be no speculators, no contractors, no fakirs, no persons of immorality of any sort; only honest people, and they must behave. Order, decency, and dignity were to prevail in the Consulate. No more impromptu suppers for Josephine, no more dinners with Barras and Mme. Tallien and their like, no more moonlight walks in the garden at Malmaison. La vie Bohème was ended, and she was wise enough to accept the situation and make the most of it.

For nearly two years the entertainments over which Josephine presided as wife of the First Consul were very simple. There were balls and parades and fêtes, but they were conducted like such functions in a great private house, where there is only the necessary etiquette to insure order and comfort. It was a republican court which was held at the Tuileries and at Malmaison—for the country home of the Bonapartes had come to be almost an official residence, so much of their time was spent there and so many were the visitors who came there. The place was a great delight to Josephine. She was having the chateau rebuilt and the gardens laid out over again, and she was indulging her caprices fully in doing it. She must have a new dining-room, large enough to seat a great diplomatic dinner party, if necessary. There must be a new billiard room, a new library, new private apartments, more room for guests and servants, more stable room. But to build over an old house in this elaborate way was no easy task, particularly when the proprietor enlarged and changed his plans each month. The architects warned Bonaparte that it would be cheaper to pull down the old chateau than to rebuild, but the work was under way, and it must go on. A year and a half after the repairs began, and before anything was completed, the bills were sent in—$120,000 had already been spent. “For what?” demanded the enraged First Consul. Protest as he would the work had to continue. For years Malmaison was a constant expense—for Josephine, never satisfied, was always enlarging and changing. In the end, the chateau was nearly double its original size, but its exterior never had any real distinction. The interior, however, was most interesting from the great number of rare and beautiful art objects which it contained and which, for the most part, Josephine had either received as gifts or had brought from Italy. There was a wonderful mantel of white marble, ornamented with mosaic, given to her by the Pope, and there were vases of Berlin from the King of Prussia. There were rare specimens of the ancient and modern works of all the Italian painters, sculptors, potters, metal workers, and there were pictures by all the great French artists of the day, among them many portraits of Napoleon—in Egypt, in Italy, crossing the Alps.

Josephine took even more interest in the park and gardens at Malmaison than in the chateau. She was passionately fond of flowers, and immediately undertook to cultivate at Malmaison a garden of rare plants, similar to that which Marie Antoinette had started at the Petit Trianon. This soon became, at the suggestion of the professional botanists she called in to assist her in collecting her plants, a veritable Botanical Garden. She gathered from the world over, and her fancy becoming known, ambassadors, merchants, and travellers, foreign and French, exerted themselves to please her. In the end, thanks to the skilful gardeners she secured, her plants became of large public value and interest. Masson says that between 1804 and 1814, 184 new species of plants found their way into the country through Josephine’s garden. The eucalyptus, hybiscus, catalpa, and camelia were first cultivated by her, not to speak of many varieties of heather, myrtle, geranium, cactus, and rhododendron.

When she first owned Malmaison, the land was in park or in vines, and there were some long avenues of fine trees. There was none of the complicated English gardening which was then in fashion. Josephine would have nothing else. So the fine allées and lawns were destroyed, and groups of shrubs, long rows of hedges, a brook, lakes, winding paths, a Swiss village, a temple of love, grottoes, a cascade, an endless variety of artificial and sentimental devices, took their place. To decorate this park of Malmaison to Josephine’s liking, the government turned over to her dozens of bronze and marble busts, vases, columns, and statues, some of them of great value.

One curious and amusing feature of the park was the animals it contained. Josephine was as fond of pets as of flowers. She always had one or more dogs from which she was never separated—not even Napoleon could make her give them up, much as he detested them. At Malmaison, she gave free rein to her liking. Birds were her chief delight, and she bought scores. In three years her bill for birds from one dealer was over $4,500. The lakes were filled with swans, black and white, and ducks from America and China; in the parks were kangaroos, deer, gazelles, a chamois; there were monkeys everywhere; and there were no end of trained pets of all kinds—usually gifts. None of these animals were of any practical use; to be sure there was a flock of valuable sheep, but these were kept merely as a decoration to a certain field, the shepherds who guarded them having been brought in their native costumes from Switzerland.

MALMAISON.

Josephine’s interest in her garden and flowers and animals was beyond that of the mere prodigal who buys for the sake of buying and loses his interest in possessing. One of the delights of her life at Malmaison was visiting daily her animals, in each of which she took the liveliest interest. Her flowers she watched carefully, and she took great delight in distributing them. Many gardens in France to-day contain plants and trees which are said to be grown from cuttings sent to some dead-and-gone ancestor by Josephine.

During the first two years of the Consulate, in spite of all the changes going on, Malmaison was the source of much brilliant life. Here when the news of Marengo reached Paris, Josephine had tents spread, and gave a great fête in honor of the victory; here gathered all the artists and writers and musicians of the day; here eminent travellers came. There was great simplicity in all entertaining, and when only the private circle of the Consul was present, there was much went on which looked like romping, Bonaparte and Josephine leading in the games.

The favorite amusement was private theatricals. Bonaparte was very fond of the drama, had studied it carefully for many years, and he gave much attention to the performances at Malmaison. The little company there was very good, Hortense de Beauharnais and Bourrienne, Bonaparte’s secretary, being actors of more than ordinary ability. Something of the care that was given to the preparation of an entertainment is indicated by the fact that Talma himself used to come to the rehearsals to criticise. Theatricals took such a place in the life at Malmaison that finally a little theatre was built. It would seat perhaps 200 persons, and was connected with the salons of the chateau by a long gallery.

At the Tuileries, the Bonapartes were in a Government House; at Malmaison they were at home, and they never anywhere were so gay, so busy, and so happy together. Certainly in these two years Josephine succeeded admirably in her purpose of repairing the mischief she had done by her past indiscretions. It was not alone her tact in society and its value to him which had won Napoleon. It was that she had been to him an incessant delight and comfort. She yielded to his will unquestioningly and willingly, and this pliability was the more welcome because his own family were in incessant opposition to his wishes. She was always on hand, ready to walk, to drive, to go with him where he would. She was tireless in her efforts to please the people he wanted pleased, to carry off successfully the burdensome functions of official life, to provide the entertainment he liked. She studied his tastes and foresaw his wants. She tried to please him in the least detail. Napoleon loved to see her in white, hence she wore no other kind of gown so often. He liked to hear her read, and no matter how tired she was she would sit at his bedside by the hour, if he wished, and read uncomplainingly. Little wonder that as the weeks went Josephine grew dearer and dearer to Napoleon or that she, seeing her hold, watched carefully that nothing loosen it.

CHAPTER V
THE QUESTION OF SUCCESSION—MARRIAGE OF HORTENSE—JOSEPHINE EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE—THE CORONATION

The first real threat to Josephine’s position came in a political question. In order to give an appearance of stability to the new government, it was proposed to give the First Consul the right to appoint a successor. But if Napoleon had this right, would he not wish for a son upon whom to confer it, would he not desire to establish a hereditary office? Josephine had given him no children. He was only thirty-one; might he not, in spite of all his affection, divorce her for the sake of this succession, which, he declared, was essential to the future of the Consulate. Josephine turned all her power of cajoling upon Napoleon. “Do not make yourself king,” she begged; and when he laughed at her, and told her that securing to himself the right to appoint a successor in the Consulate was nothing of that sort—only a device to prevent the overthrow of the government in case of his absence at the head of the army, or in case of his sudden death, she was not convinced. She began, indeed, to talk of the advisability of bringing back the Bourbons, and called herself a royalist.

Napoleon’s decision was taken, however. He must appoint a successor, and it should be one of his own family. But which one? Joseph had no head for affairs. With Lucien he had quarreled. But there was Louis, who had none of his brothers’ faults and all of their good qualities. Louis it should be. The knowledge that Napoleon undoubtedly favored Louis as his successor determined Josephine to arrange a marriage between him and her daughter Hortense.

At this time, 1800, Hortense was seventeen years old, though the exceptional experiences of her childhood had given her a thoughtfulness quite superior to her years. She had been but ten when her mother, lest a suspicion of her patriotism might be roused because she brought up her children in idleness, had apprenticed her to a dressmaker. She was but eleven years old when her parents were imprisoned, and when in the costumes of laborers’ children she and Eugène had made frequent visits to les Carmes and had gone together more than once to beg of persons in authority for the lives of their father and mother. After the Revolution, Hortense had been placed in Mme. Campan’s school at St. Germain—a school established to give the young girls of the better class whose parents had been scattered or guillotined in the Revolution, an opportunity to learn the ways and the graces of that society which for so long the patriots had been trying to uproot. At Mme. Campan’s, Hortense had distinguished herself by her gentleness and her goodness, by the quickness with which she learned everything taught, and by her enthusiasm and ideals. She had left the school a thoroughly charming and accomplished girl, to join her mother, now the wife of the First Consul. She had all of Josephine’s charms of person, her grace and suppleness, her beautiful form, her interesting and mobile face; but she was more vivacious than Josephine and more intelligent. As for her accomplishments, they were many. She played the piano and the harp, and sang well. Her drawing and embroidery were not bad, as many specimens still preserved show. She danced with exquisite grace; she, even at this time, had literary aspirations, and she was the star of the company which put on so many pieces at the little theatre at Malmaison.

Hortense was a favorite of Napoleon. He had loved her first because she was Josephine’s daughter. After she left school and was constantly of the household, he grew more and more attached to her, more and more anxious for her happiness. Hortense, though she never ceased to fear Napoleon, loved him with the enthusiasm of a young girl for a conquering hero. She seems never to have questioned his will—never to have doubted his affection for her.

Hortense’s marriage was, of course, an important question with the Bonapartes, and various suitors had been considered. The girl herself was not ambitious. Neither wealth nor station obscured her judgment. She wanted to marry for love, she declared. At one time she had a strong feeling for Duroc, and Napoleon favored the marriage strongly. Duroc was of good family and a brave soldier, and Hortense loved him; what better? Josephine opposed it. She had set her heart on Louis Bonaparte, in spite of the fact that Hortense felt something like an antipathy to the young man. Louis himself did not take to the marriage at first. He had imbibed from his mother and brothers the idea that the Beauharnais were the natural enemies of the Bonapartes, and a marriage with Hortense they all declared, would be disloyal. However, in September, 1801, when Louis returned to Paris after several months absence and saw Hortense at a ball, he was so impressed by her charm that he yielded at once to Josephine’s wishes, and asked for her hand. Napoleon consented with a little regret; Hortense obeyed as a matter of duty, urged to it as she was both by her mother and Mme. Campan. The marriage took place early in January, 1802. It was a victory for Josephine over the Bonapartes, so her friends said, and so the Bonapartes felt bitterly. But, alas, it was a victory for which Hortense paid the price. Before the end of the year, it was evident that Mme. Louis Bonaparte was very unhappy; her husband was jealous and exacting, and constantly tried to turn her against her mother in the family feud. Not even the birth of a son, in October, silenced his grievances for long, though to Napoleon and to Josephine the coming of the little Napoleon-Charles, as he was named, was an inexpressible joy. To Josephine the child was a new support to her position, a new reason why a succession could be established without divorcing her and re-marrying. It was a succession through her, too, since this was her daughter’s child.

Napoleon himself soon became more devoted to the child than its father ever was. In a way, his own ardent desire for fatherhood was satisfied by the presence of the baby, which he kept by him as much as he could, riding it on his back, trotting it on his foot, rolling with it on the floor, lying beside it at night until it slept—a touching proof of this extraordinary man’s passion to possess a love which was faithful and disinterested. As time went on and the question of the succession came into the senate, the struggle between the brothers as to how the heredity should be regulated reached its climax. Napoleon determined to adopt Hortense’s child and make him his heir. Joseph, Lucien, and Louis himself refused to resign what they called their rights, and each had important supporters in his position. Lucien, in the struggle, broke entirely with Napoleon.

But if the succession was to be settled to Josephine’s satisfaction, there were other matters which worried her at the beginning of the life Consulate. Chief among these was that Napoleon insisted upon leaving Malmaison for St. Cloud. Josephine’s interest in the former place was so great, her life there had been so happy, that she was violently opposed to any change. St. Cloud was too large; it smacked too much of royalty, the idea of which was awaking such vague alarms in her mind; its associations were too sad. But her opposition availed nothing whatever. Bonaparte felt that a larger residence was necessary. Malmaison was a private home, St. Cloud belonged to the State, and he, as the head of the State, wished to occupy its palaces. They had no sooner taken St. Cloud than their whole mode of life changed; the simple, informal ways of Malmaison were laid aside, and a rigid etiquette adopted. There is a governor of the palace, there are prefects of the palace, there are ladies of the palace. Josephine and Napoleon no longer receive everybody of the household at their table, but eat alone, inviting, two or three times a week, those persons whom they may care particularly to distinguish. The ladies and gentlemen belonging to the palace have tables of their own quite apart. There is a military household annexed to St. Cloud, with four generals and a large guard, an elaborate suite which accompanies the First Consul when he goes forth. Every Sunday, a great crowd of dignitaries—senators, cardinals, bishops, ambassadors, everybody of note in Paris—flock to the First Consul’s receptions. After paying their respects to him, they pass into the apartment of Madame Bonaparte. It is the former apartment of Marie Antoinette, and that Queen herself did not receive in more state than the wife of the First Consul. It is the same at the services in the chapel, which are held every Sunday, and which Bonaparte insists everybody shall attend. At the theatre of the palace, where the little plays which they so much enjoyed at Malmaison are still repeated, there is the same increase of etiquette. Josephine and Bonaparte no longer are seated with their friends, but occupy a loge apart; and when they enter, the whole assembly rises and salutes. People are there by invitation, too, and no one pretends to applaud unless the signal is given by the First Consul.

Day by day Josephine bemoaned this new departure; and as hostile criticisms and sneers reached her, she set her face against the changes. Her protests were useless: “Josephine, you are tiresome—you know nothing about these things,” Napoleon finally told her, and Fouché, her friend, finally silenced her by his cynical advice. “Be quiet, Madame; you annoy your husband uselessly. He will be Consul for life, King or Emperor, all that he can be. Your fears disturb him; your advice would wound him. Keep your proper place, and let the events which neither you nor I know how to prevent work out.”

She did accept, and took her part. If it was true that Napoleon was going to make himself Emperor, she must, before all, so conduct herself that he would prefer her on the throne at his side to all the world. As the weeks went on and it became evident that an Empire would soon be proclaimed, Josephine had increasing need of discretion. The Bonaparte family had set themselves again to prevent the succession going to a Beauharnais. Josephine should be divorced, they said; Eugène, to whom Napoleon was greatly attached, should be sent off with his mother. As for his adopting little Napoleon-Charles, the child of Hortense, neither Joseph nor Louis, the father, would hear to it. “Why should I give up to my son a part of your succession?” said Louis to his brother. “What have I done that I should be disinherited? What will be my place when this child has become yours and finds himself in a position far superior to mine, independent of me, outranking me, looking upon me with suspicion and perhaps with contempt? No, I will never consent to it, and rather than consent to bow my head before my son I will leave France; I will take Napoleon away with me, and we will see if you will dare to steal a child from his father.”

Napoleon’s sisters, particularly Caroline, Mme. Murat, were no less determined than the brothers to secure all the advantages possible from his glory. In their eagerness, they showed such envy and bitterness that Napoleon was deeply disgusted, and gave them no satisfaction as to his intentions. He even took some pains to tease them. One day when the family were together and he was playing with little Napoleon, he said, “Do you know, little one, that you are in danger of being King one of these days?”

“And Achille?” Murat exclaimed, referring to his own son.

“Oh, Achille will make a good soldier,” answered Napoleon laughing, and when he saw the black looks of both Caroline and Murat, he added: “At all events, my poor little one, I advise you, if you want to live, to accept no meals that your cousins offer you.”

In spite of all the plotting and protesting of the Bonapartes, Josephine was proclaimed Empress, and the law of succession was passed as it pleased Napoleon:—“The French people desire the inheritance of the Imperial dignity in the direct natural or adoptive line of descent from Napoleon Bonaparte and in the direct natural, legitimate line of descent from Joseph Bonaparte and from Louis Bonaparte.” Napoleon was free to adopt either Eugène or Napoleon-Charles and make him his heir. The law mentioned neither Joseph nor Louis as heir. Josephine’s victory in this instance was as much due to the fact that she had made no protests about the succession and had asked nothing, as to anything else. Her seeming confidence (as a matter of fact, she feared the worst for herself) and her generous pleasure in the satisfaction those about took in their new honors offered such a contrast to the jealousy and faultfinding of the Bonapartes that Napoleon felt more and more, as he had often said to her in family quarrels: “You are my only comfort, Josephine.” Not only Josephine, but Hortense and Eugène showed themselves in all this period wise and generous. The two latter apparently felt sincerely that Napoleon did more for them than they had a right to expect. The gratitude and disinterestedness they showed was indeed one of the few real satisfactions of Napoleon’s life, for he seems to have believed always that they were genuine, something he never felt about the expressions of his own family.

Not only was the law of succession fixed to Josephine’s satisfaction; but to her unspeakable joy, Napoleon finally told her that she was to be crowned at the same time as he. In the new government she had no political rights, but in this supreme ceremony she should share. Here again it may have been as much family opposition as love for Josephine and desire to associate her with himself in this greatest of royal spectacles that finally led Napoleon to this decision. Just as before the proclamation of the Empire the Bonapartes quarreled about the succession, now they tormented the Emperor about their positions and their privileges. “One would think,” he said testily one day to Caroline, when she was upbraiding him for not according to his sisters the honors due them, “that I had robbed you of the inheritance of the late King, our father.” Joseph did not hesitate to say sarcastic things, even in official gatherings, about the impropriety of crowning a woman who had given her husband no successor. Napoleon stood it for some time, and finally in a violent outburst of passion silenced him at least for the time. The announcement that Josephine was to be crowned, and that her sisters-in-law were to carry the train of her robe, caused still further heart-burnings, but the fiat had gone forth and everybody finally submitted.

However, the new court was too busy in the summer and fall of 1804 to give overmuch time to quarreling. The mere matter of familiarizing themselves with the new code of etiquette sufficiently well not to incur the ridicule of those who had been brought up to court usages, was serious enough to absorb most of their time and energies. They succeeded fairly well, though the aristocrats of the Faubourg St. Germain told endless tales of the blunders they made, stories which were circulated industriously in the courts of Europe. Their failure was not for lack of effort, however. Josephine and her ladies took up the code with energy—it was a new amusement, and for weeks they studied their parts and went through their rehearsals as if they were preparing a play for the stage. Before the time of the coronation they had become fairly at home with court usages and were ready to take up the rehearsals for that ceremony with fresh energy.

Indeed, for a month at least, all Paris was absorbed in preparations for the coronation. Fontainebleau was to be put in order to receive the Pope. Notre Dame, where the ceremony was to take place, was to be superbly decorated. Magnificent carriages and trappings for horses and livery were to be provided. Robes and uniforms were to be made ready for the actors. All of the decorators, jewelers, costume-makers, merchants of all sorts in the city were busy night and day. As for the court itself, there one heard nothing talked but the coming spectacle. Under the direction of the Grand Master, the ceremonies had been planned down to the most trivial detail, and everybody was busy learning and practicing his part.

THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

From a pencil sketch made by David in the Cathedral of Notre Dame at the time of Josephine’s coronation, and presented to his son. The original is now in the Museum of Versailles.

By the time the Pope arrived at Fontainebleau, on November 25, everything was practically ready. The court had gone to Fontainebleau to meet His Holiness, and in the few days it remained there before going to Paris, Josephine achieved a victory which completed her happiness for the time. No religious marriage between her and Napoleon had ever been celebrated, and although it had been a part of Napoleon’s policy since he came into power to restore the church, and although he had insisted on an observation of all its ceremonies, he had always refused Josephine’s request for a religious marriage. Now, however, she obtained a powerful advocate—the Pope—to whom, at confession, she told her trouble. He declared he could not officiate at the coronation unless a religious marriage was performed. The night before the coronation, Napoleon gave his consent, and the service was held at the Tuileries in profound secrecy, only two witnesses being present.

December 2nd had been set for the coronation. The Tuileries, from which the royal party was to go to Notre Dame, was astir very early, for the Pope was to leave the palace at nine; the Emperor and Empress an hour later. The morning was given to dressing—a long task in Josephine’s case, but one which justified the labor and thought which had been given to her costume. Never had she looked more beautiful than when she joined the Emperor and her ladies. Napoleon was delighted at her appearance, and Mme. de Remusat declared that she did not look over twenty-five.

Josephine’s coronation gown was of white satin, elaborately embroidered in silver and gold; it hung from the shoulders, and was confined by a girdle set with gems. A train of white velvet embroidered in gold and silver was fastened to this gown. The neck was low and square, and the sleeves were long. A ruff, stiff with gold, was set into the top of the sleeves, and rose high behind her head. The narrow corsage and the top of the sleeves were decorated with diamonds. She wore a magnificent necklace of sculptured stones surrounded with diamonds, and on her head was a diadem of pearls and diamonds. Her shoes were of white velvet, embroidered in gold; on her hands she wore white gloves, embroidered in gold. The cost of the pieces of this costume are interesting—the gown is estimated to have cost $2,000; the velvet train, $1,400; the shoes, $130.

The pontifical procession had been gone from the Palace over an hour when Napoleon and Josephine, accompanied by Joseph and Louis Bonaparte, descended, and entered the gorgeous state carriage drawn by eight horses in rich harness. As the sides of the vehicle were entirely of glass, the spectators could look easily upon the magnificence of the party inside. From the Tuileries, the party proceeded slowly to the Archbishop’s palace, along streets crowded with people and decorated with every device which skill and money could provide. During the entire procession, salvos of artillery at intervals greeted the Emperor. At the palace of the Archbishop, the party entered, and here Napoleon put on his coronation robe and Josephine finished her costume by changing her diadem for one of amethysts and by fastening to her left shoulder a royal mantle of red velvet, embroidered in golden bees and in the imperial N surrounded by garlands, and bordered and lined with ermine. This mantle fell from the shoulders, and trailed for fully two yards on the floor.

These changes of toilet made, the cortège started—pages, cuirassiers and heralds, the Grand Master of Ceremonies and his aides,—a marshal bearing a cushion on which was placed the ring for the Empress, another marshal carrying the crown on a cushion. Following the Empress and her attendants, came the cortège of the Emperor; first the marshals bearing the crown, sceptre, and sword of Charlemagne, and the ring and globe belonging to Napoleon; then the Emperor, crowned with a wreath of gold laurel leaves, the sceptre in one hand, and in the other a baton—emblem of justice, his heavy royal mantle carried by several princes, a guard of richly dressed ornamental personages following.

On entering the cathedral, both the Emperor and the Empress were presented with holy water, and then began their slow journey up the aisle of the cathedral to the high altar, where the service took place. The sceptre, crown, sword, ring and globe of the Emperor were placed upon the altar, and beside them were placed the crown, ring, and mantle of the Empress. The Pope then anointed the Emperor’s head and hands with oil, and the same service was used immediately after in anointing Josephine. The mass followed, during which the Pope blessed the imperial ornaments of both Napoleon and Josephine.

At the close of this service, the Emperor mounted the steps to the altar, on which the imperial crown was placed, lifted it, and put it himself on his head; then taking the crown of the Empress in his hands, he descended the steps to the place where Josephine was kneeling. With a gesture at once so gentle and so proud that it impressed the whole splendid audience, he put the crown upon her head, while the Pope pronounced the orison: “May God crown you with the crown of glory and justice; may He give you strength and courage that, through this benediction, and by your own faith and the multiplied fruits of your good works, you may attain the crown of the eternal kingdom, through the grace of Him whose reign and empire extends from age to age.”

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON I. BESTOWING THE CROWN ON THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE, DECEMBER 2, 1804.

As the last words of the prayer died away the cortège turned from the high altar and proceeded slowly down the nave to the point where the throne had been placed. At the top of a staircase of some twenty-nine steps was a large platform, on which a sumptuous arm-chair, richly decorated with embroideries and golden symbols, had been placed for Napoleon. To the right of this seat, and one step lower, was a smaller chair, with similar decorations, for Josephine. The Emperor and Empress mounted the steps and seated themselves. They were followed by the Pope, who blessed them, and then, kissing the Emperor on the cheek, turned to the assembly, and pronounced the words, “Vivat imperator in æternum.” The Te Deum, the prayers, the reading of the Scriptures, the offering, followed; and then, the mass finished, the oath taken, Napoleon and Josephine descended and attended by their suites, left the cathedral, and entered their carriage. The ceremony, from the time of leaving the Tuileries, had taken five hours. It was three and a half hours more before the long procession was ended and they were back again in the palace.

That night Napoleon and Josephine dined alone, the Empress wearing her crown, at her husband’s request, so pleased was he with the grace and dignity with which she carried it.

CHAPTER VI
ETIQUETTE REGULATING JOSEPHINE’S LIFE—ROYAL JOURNEYS—TACT OF THE EMPRESS—EXTRAVAGANCE IN DRESS.

Consecrated by the Pope, crowned by Napoleon, Josephine’s position seemed impregnable in the eyes of all the world. It was one of dazzling splendor. The little creole whose youth had been spent in a sugar-house, who had passed months in a prison cell, who many a time had borrowed money to pay her rent, now had become the mistress, not of a palace, but of palaces—of Fontainebleau, the Tuileries, Versailles, Rambouillet. She who for so many years had begged favors at the doors of others, was now the center of a great machine, called a “Household,” devoted to serving her. There were a First Almoner, a Maid of Honor, a Lady of the Bedchamber, numbers of Ladies of the Palace, a First Chamberlain, a First Equery, a Private Secretary, a Chief Steward—all of them having their respective attendants; and there were, besides these, valets, footmen, pages, and servants of all grades. Her life, so long one of unthinking freedom, was now regulated to the last detail. The apartments in the palace devoted to her own uses were two—the apartment of honor and the private apartment. Before the door of the ante-chamber of the apartment of honor stood, day and night, a door-keeper; within were four valets, two huissiers, two pages (to do errands), from twelve to twenty-six footmen, ready to do honor to the incoming and outgoing guests. In the salons, where visitors waited, were other decorative footmen and pages—a retinue ten times larger than actual service required, but none too large to the eye accustomed to court etiquette. It was through this hedge of attendants that the supplicant, flatterer or friend who would see Josephine now must work his way—a slow way, often only to be made by fair address, strong relations, and judicious gifts. Josephine by nature the most accessible of mortals, was now obliged to turn away old friends because they did not please His Majesty, the Emperor. That he was oftentimes quite right, the following frank little letter of hers shows:—

“I am sorry, my dear friend, that my wishes cannot be fulfilled, as you and my other old friends imagine they can. You seem to think that if I do not see you it is because I have forgotten you. Alas! no, on the contrary, my memory is more tenacious than I wish. The more I think of what I am, the more I am mortified at not being able to obey the dictates of my heart. The Empress of France is the veriest slave in the Empire, and she cannot acquit the debt which Madame de Beauharnais owes. This makes me miserable, and it will explain why you are not near me; why I do not see Madame Tallien; why, in short, many of my former friends would be forgotten by me, but that my memory is faithful.

“The Emperor, displeased at the prevailing laxity of morals, and anxious to check its progress, wishes that his palace should present an example of virtuous and religious conduct. Anxious to consolidate the religion which he has restored, and having no power to alter laws to which he has given his assent, he has determined to exclude from Court all persons who have taken advantage of the law of divorce. He has given this promise to the Pope, and he cannot break it. This reason alone has obliged him to refuse the favor I solicited of having you about me. His refusal afflicts me, but it is too positive to admit of any hope of its being retracted.”

The apartment of honor was devoted to receiving, and Josephine’s movements there were prescribed in detail. The costume she should wear, the chair in which she should sit, the rank of the person who should be allowed in the room when she received, who should announce, who carry a note, who bring a glass of water, all of this was ordered and performed precisely. In her private apartment there was greater appearance of freedom, though it was arranged by the code at what hour she should take her morning cup of tea and by whose hand it should be presented, who should admit her pet dog, what should be her costume for the morning, and who should arrange it.

When the Empress left the palace, the forms were multiplied. Attended by her ladies of waiting, she passed over a carpet spread for her passage, through the file of liveried servants which decorated all the apartments. Before her marched the younger of the two pretty pages always waiting in the outer salon, while the elder bore the train of her robe. At the door, the magnificent portier d’appartement struck the floor with his halberd as she passed. One of the dozen carriages in her stables drawn usually by eight horses awaited her. Before, beside, and behind as she drove were servants in gorgeous livery, mounted or afoot; a brilliant spectacle for the passer-by, but a wearisome one for poor Josephine.

It was no better when she travelled, as she did a great deal, especially in the first two years after the coronation. Thus in the spring of 1805, she accompanied Napoleon to Milan, where he was to be crowned King of Italy. The journey was a long series of brilliant functions—at Lyons, a triumphal arch, a reception by the Empress, an entertainment at the theater; at Turin, flattering ceremonies; on the field of Marengo, mimic manœuvres of the battle, led by Murat, Lannes, and Bessières, and watched by Napoleon and Josephine from a throne, and after the manœuvres, the laying of a corner-stone to those who lost their lives on the field; at Milan, on May 26, the coronation of Napoleon, which Josephine watched from the gallery of the cathedral, followed by splendid public fêtes lasting for days; a mimic representation on the battle-field of Castiglione; visits to Bologna, Modena, Parma, Geneva, Turin, all attended by the most extravagant festivities. This journey lasted from April 4th to July 18th, the date of their return to St. Cloud, and through it all Josephine was scarcely free for an hour from the fatiguing duties of a great sovereign.

Napoleon returned to Paris from Italy to prepare for war with Austria, and in September he set out on the campaign. Josephine went with him as far as Strasburg, where she transferred her household to the Imperial Palace which had been established there for Napoleon’s use. For two months she remained at Strasburg, while Napoleon dazzled Europe by the campaign which, on Dec. 2nd, culminated at Austerlitz. Alone she conducted her court as she would have done in Paris, as magnificently and as brilliantly. In November, she left Strasburg to go to Munich—a triumphal march, really, for everywhere she received royal honors. Her approach to every city through which she was to pass en route was announced by the ringing of bells and salvos of artillery; great processions of dignitaries went out to meet her; arches of triumph were erected for her; beautiful gifts were presented; there were illuminations, balls, and state performances of all sorts. She reached Munich on December 5th, and here remained until after January 14th, on which day another great ceremony, her son’s marriage with Princess Augusta of Baden, was celebrated.

From the manner of its arrangement one might have expected nothing but misery from this alliance. The young princess was violently opposed to it, and only consented at her father’s entreaty—“a sacrifice to father, family and country,” she said. Eugène knew nothing of the proposed marriage until he arrived, at Napoleon’s order, in Munich. The two young people never saw each other until four days before the wedding. Fortunately they fell in love at once, and their married life was one of exceptional devotion and happiness. Napoleon was so pleased with the course things took that he adopted Eugène at the time of the celebration of the marriage—a great blow to the Bonapartes and a new happiness for Josephine.

The fatiguing duties attendant upon official journeys in foreign countries and upon holding a court in a strange city were repeated again in 1806. In January, after Eugène’s marriage, Josephine came back to Paris with the Emperor; but in September he left for the campaign against Prussia and Russia, and she went to Mayence to establish her court. This time the journey was not according to the code, for Napoleon had wished the Empress to remain in Paris during his absence, and it was only at the last moment that, overcome by her grief, he consented that she go with him in his carriage. Only a single maid accompanied her—the royal household not being able to start its cumbersome self for several days. At Mayence Josephine remained until January. Hortense, now Queen of Holland (Louis had been made King in 1806), was with her, with her two little sons, and in many ways the court was agreeable; but Josephine wished to join the Emperor, and it was only when he commanded her to go to Paris, that she consented to return and open her court there.

The tact and good sense with which Josephine conducted herself in her exacting and slavish position—the grace and patience with which she wore her royal harness, are as pathetic as they are marvelous. To rule her household, with all the jealousies and meannesses natural to such a combination of women, so that there would be no scandals, and that the members would respect and love her, was a delicate task; but she never failed in it. She kept their love, and she kept her supremacy—even the supremacy of beauty. There were many of the young women received by the First Consul who were glad enough to try to outshine Josephine; but she almost always outwitted them. An amusing example of her skill is an encounter that occurred between her and her sister-in-law, Pauline. Pauline, who was young, vivacious, and very pretty, always resented a little the charm that Josephine exercised, and she took no small pleasure in trying to outdo her. In 1803, she was married to the Prince Borghese, at the chateau of Joseph Bonaparte, Mortefontaine. A few days after her marriage, she appeared in Paris, where she was presented officially at St. Cloud. It was natural enough that Pauline should desire to outshine everybody at this presentation, but Josephine desired particularly that she herself should not be so thrown into the shadow that Napoleon would notice it. She did a very clever thing. Although it was winter, she put on a light robe of white Indian muslin, the garment which always became her best and in which Napoleon delighted to see her. The gown was made very simply, and her only ornaments were enamelled lion’s heads which caught up the sleeves on her shoulder and which formed a buckle to her girdle. Her arms and neck were bare, and her hair was done on the top of her head. She made an altogether charming picture; and when the First Consul saw her, he said, “Why, Josephine, what does this mean? I am jealous, you have gotten yourself up for somebody. What makes you so beautiful to-day?” Even after they were in the salon, his compliments continued. The Princess Borghese was a little late in arriving. When she did appear, she was resplendent; her dress was a bright green velvet, embroidered with diamonds; at her side was a great bouquet of brilliants; on her head, a diadem of emeralds and diamonds. Josephine in her simple robe stood at the end of the salon waiting exactly as if she had been a sovereign, to let her sister-in-law come to her. Pauline was obliged to go the length of the salon to salute her. After the presentation, she said to Madame Junot, who tells the story, “My sister-in-law thought she would be disagreeable when she made me cross the salon; in fact, she delighted me, because otherwise the train of my gown could not have been seen.” Presently, however, Pauline was thrown into despair. She had forgotten entirely that the grand salon where they were received was furnished in blue, and that while it made a charming background for Josephine’s white muslin, for her green velvet it was something deplorable. Josephine, of course, could not be accused of having planned this; it was Pauline’s own forgetfulness which had wrought her confusion. The white gown and the regal manner were a favorite device of Josephine when she suspected that some young and fascinating woman was preparing to outshine her.

One very difficult task for Josephine in her court was holding her own with the women of noble birth who were gradually being admitted, but she did it by a combination of graciousness, deference, and majesty which was not to be analyzed, and which only an all but infinite tact explain. It was tact born of good will—a good will which everybody about her admitted. “No one ever denied the exquisite goodness of Madame Bonaparte,” Mlle. Avrillon says. “She was extremely affable with everybody about her. I do not believe that there ever was a woman who made her companions feel their dependence less than she.” Madame de Remusat says that to goodness she joined a remarkably even disposition, and the faculty of forgetting any evil that any one had done to her. Another member of her household has said of her goodness, that it was as inseparable from her character as grace from her person; “she was good to excess, sensitive beyond all expression, generous to prodigality; she tried to make everybody happy about her, and no woman was ever more loved by those who served her and merited it more.... As she had known unhappiness, she knew how to sympathize with the troubles of others. Her temper was always sweet, always even, as obliging for her enemies as for her friends; she made peace wherever there was trouble or discord.”

Josephine was no less happy when on her journeys than at home. She won everybody. No one was presented who did not go away feeling that in some way the Empress had especially distinguished him. As a matter of fact, she prepared herself carefully for her meetings with foreigners by employing an instructor who informed her about their families, their deeds, their books, their diplomatic victories. She mastered this instruction so thoroughly that she always had some flattering reference at her tongue’s end. The diligence and energy she showed in preparing herself for official functions is the more surprising when one remembers her natural indolence.

Josephine had few resources in which she could find relief from her burden of etiquette. She cared little for books—out-of-door sports wearied her, and the hunt, on which she often accompanied the Emperor, was a sore trial. She was afraid, to begin with, and she never failed to cry over a wounded beast. She was a poor musician. She embroidered, to be sure, but not because she cared for it, she did like cards, and played tric-trac whenever etiquette allowed it. She played a good hand of whist, too; and she was very fond of telling her own fortune with cards—hardly a day passed, indeed, that she did not try to read the future from cards.

JOSEPHINE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH AND QUEEN OF ITALY. 1805.

Designed by Buguet.

The one real pleasure in her life was undoubtedly her toilet. She had always been extravagantly fond of personal decoration—she loved brilliant stones, gay silks, fine laces, soft cashmeres; and when she found herself an Empress, with every reason and every opportunity for indulging her love of finery, she abandoned herself to the pleasure until her wardrobe became the chief amusement of her life.

Almost every day men and women, bearing stuffs of all sorts—jewels, models, laces, everything, in short, that French fancy could devise for a woman’s toilet—found their way to Josephine’s private apartments. Before these wily tradespeople she had no self-restraint—one should say, perhaps, no self-respect,—for almost invariably she allowed herself to be wheedled into buying. The numbers of pieces added to her wardrobe each year indicates a startling prodigality. Thus, in one year, she bought one hundred and thirty-six dresses, twenty cashmere shawls, seventy-three corsets, forty-eight pieces of elegant stuffs, eighty-seven hats, seventy-one pairs of silk stockings, nine hundred and eighty pairs of gloves, five hundred and twenty pairs of shoes. If this had been an unusual purchase, it might be explained; but it was not. With every season there was the same thoughtless buying of all that struck her fancy. It was out of the question for her to wear all she bought, for Josephine was not one who prided herself on never appearing twice in the same costume. Many of the things she bought she never put on at all; and when her wardrobes were overburdened, she made a little fête of the task of lightening them, giving away piece after piece of uncut lace, pattern after pattern of velvet, silk or muslin, rich gowns, hats, stockings, shoes. Anything and everything was scattered in the same reckless fashion in which it had been acquired. Not that her giving of personal articles was confined to this occasional clearing out of stock; she gave as one of her royal prerogatives, whenever it pleased her to do so. Often she took from her shoulders a delicate scarf or superb cashmere shawl to throw about some one of her ladies whom she heard admiring it, and not infrequently she sent a gown to one who had complimented her on its beauty. Mlle. Ducrest says that one day she heard a gentleman of the household, in admiring a cashmere gown which the Empress wore, remark that the pattern would do very well for a waistcoat. Josephine picked up a pair of scissors, and cutting the skirt of her dress into three pieces, gave one to each of the three gentlemen in the room.

Josephine’s prodigality caused great confusion in her budget. She was allowed, at the beginning of her reign, $72,000 a year for her toilet, and later this was increased to $90,000. But there was never a year during the time that she did not far over-reach her allowance and oblige the Emperor to come to her relief. According to the estimate Masson has made, Josephine spent on an average $220,000 yearly on her toilet during her reign. It is only by going over her wardrobe article by article and noting the cost and number of each piece that one can realize how a woman could spend this amount. Take the simple item of her hose—which were almost always white silk, often richly embroidered or in open work. She kept 150 or more pairs on hand, and they cost from $4.00 to $8.00 a pair. She employed two hair-dressers—one for every day, at $1,200 a year; the other for great occasions, at $2,000 a year; and she paid them each from one thousand to two thousand dollars a year for furnishings. It was the same for all the smaller items of her toilet.

Coming to gowns, the sums they cost were enormous. Her simple muslin gowns, of which her wardrobe always contained two hundred and more, cost from one hundred to four hundred dollars apiece. Her cashmere and velvet gowns were much more costly, ornamented as many of them were with ermine and with buckles, buttons, and girdles set with precious stones. One of her great extravagances was cashmere shawls. She never had enough of them—it is true she gave away many—and she rarely appeared without one within reach. Her collection of shawls is said to have been the most valuable ever seen in Europe. Many of them were made after patterns which she sent herself to the Orient. They were of every delicate shade of color, and in texture they were like gossamer. Her coquetry with these beautiful drapes was like the coquetry of the Spanish signora with a fan. She said everything with them.

A large lump of Josephine’s yearly allowance for dress went into jewels. Her extravagance in this particular was less justifiable than in any other, because she already owned a large quantity of precious stones of all sorts when she became Empress, many of them gifts to her in Italy, and because as Empress she had at her command the magnificent crown jewels—$1,000,000 worth of gems, in fact, were hers when she wished. Nevertheless, she bought—evidently for the mere pleasure of buying and laying away—innumerable ornaments of every description, scores of which she probably never put on; rings, bracelets, necklaces, girdles, buckles, all by the hundreds. No stone known to commerce but was represented in her collection. No form into which gold and silver can be fashioned which was not found there. She had specimens of the ornaments of all ages and all countries, and of the novelties of the times she bought by the score. She not only added incessantly, but she exchanged, reset, recut, carried on, in fact, a trade. To the end of her life she kept her interest in her jewels, and loved to show them to her companions, to play with them, to decorate herself with them. They were kept together for many years after her death, but were finally sold by Hortense. When experts came to value them, it was found that according to the prices they set—fully one-third below the cost price—the large pieces alone, such as her diadem of diamonds and her splendid pearl necklace, were worth nearly a million dollars; and as for the small pieces—the innumerable trinkets of every size and kind and style—their value was never computed.

The effect on the Emperor of Josephine’s prodigality can be imagined. He appreciated as she never could the lack of dignity in her reckless spending, and did his utmost to persuade her to keep her accounts in order. He even resorted to severe measures, turning out of the palace tradespeople who he knew hung about her apartments watching an opportunity to show her a novelty in modes or in ornamentation, a rare jewel or a rich shawl. He ordered that her expenses be regulated by a person especially appointed for that purpose and that Josephine herself be not allowed to buy anything without supervision. None of these means effected anything. Annually there was a great debt run up by her, and when the settlement could be put off no longer, Josephine would confess. She always put the amount far below what it actually was, and only after much badgering could Napoleon get at the real state of things. Then there was a scene, ending always in tears from Josephine. Invariably they conquered Napoleon. “Come, come, pet, dry your tears,” he would beg, “don’t worry;” and he paid the debts, and raised her income. In twelve months the scene was repeated.

CHAPTER VII
JOSEPHINE NOT ALLOWED TO GO TO POLAND—FEAR OF DIVORCE—THE RECONCILIATION OF 1807–1808—THE CAMPAIGN OF 1809 AND ITS EFFECT ON NAPOLEON.

For two years after she mounted the throne, Josephine felt tolerably secure in its possession. It was not until the winter of 1806–1807, when Napoleon was busy with war against Russia and Prussia, that the spectre which had alarmed her at the beginning of the Life Consulate and again at the proclamation of the Empire, arose again. Her first alarm came from the fact that when she wanted to go to the Emperor from Mayence, whither she had taken her household, he put her off. Sometimes he even rebuked her for her persistence in clinging to the idea. “Talleyrand comes, and tells me that you do nothing but cry,” he wrote her on November 1st. “But what do you want? You have your daughter, your grandchildren, and good news; certainly you have the materials for happiness and contentment.” More often he flattered and petted, as when, on November 28th, he wrote from Warsaw: “All the Polish women are Frenchwomen, but there is only one woman for me. Do you know her? I could draw her portrait for you; but I should have to flatter it too much for you to recognize it; nevertheless, to tell the truth, my heart would have only good things to tell you.” And again, a few days later: “I have your letter of November 26th. I notice two things: you say, ‘I don’t read your letters’; that is unjust. I am sorry for your bad opinion. You tell me you are not jealous. I have long observed that people who are angry always say that they are not angry, that people who are afraid say they are not afraid; so you are convicted of jealousy; I am delighted! Besides, you are mistaken, and in the deserts of fair Poland one thinks but little about pretty women. Yesterday I was at a ball of the nobility of the province; rather pretty women, rather rich, rather ill dressed, although in the Paris fashion.” He continued all through December to try to dissuade her. “I have your letter of November 27th, and I see that your little head is much excited. I remember the line: ‘A woman’s wish is a devouring flame,’ and I must calm you. I wrote to you that I was in Poland, that when we should have got into winter quarters you might come; so you must wait a few days. The greater one becomes, the less will one must have; one depends on events and circumstances. You may go to Frankfurt or Darmstadt. I hope to summon you in a few days, but events must decide. The warmth of your letter convinces me that you pretty women take no account of obstacles; what you want must be; but I must say that I am the greatest slave that lives; my master has no heart, and this master is the nature of things.”

Josephine would not give up her plan, however, and in Napoleon’s arguments that the trip from Mayence to Warsaw was too long—the roads too bad, the weather too cold, for her to venture it, that she was needed in Paris, she saw only a desire to be free from her presence; and when finally he ordered her to “go back to Paris to be happy and contented there,” she obeyed with tears and lamentations. Josephine’s jealousy at this time was more than justifiable. For many months, in fact, she had known beyond question of Napoleon’s various infidelities, and she suspected that the real reason he refused her request to be allowed to go to him was that he had found a new mistress. Or might it not be, she asked herself, that he was planning a divorce and re-marriage. The first supposition was true. It was Madame Walewski who was the chief obstacle to Josephine going to Warsaw, although the reasons Napoleon gave—the danger of the journey and the need of Josephine in Paris—were plausible enough at the moment.

It was not until July, 1807, that the Emperor took up the subject of a divorce, as a political necessity, with his counsellors. While at Tilsit with the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, the divorce was discussed, and Napoleon ordered that a list of the marriageable princesses of Europe be made out for him. No doubt vague rumors of the transactions at Tilsit reached Josephine. She took them the more to heart because in May of that year (1807) Hortense’s eldest son, Napoleon-Charles, had died. The death of the boy destroyed one of her chief hopes. It removed the child whom she knew Napoleon so loved that he would have been well satisfied to have made him his successor. Hortense had a second child, Napoleon Louis; but the Emperor did not have the same feeling for him.

When Napoleon returned to Paris after the meeting at Tilsit, Josephine was prepared to do all that was possible to reconquer the place in her husband’s heart, which many months’ absence had certainly weakened. She even had Hortense’s little son Louis with her, a constant reminder to the Empire that here was an heir of Bonaparte and Beauharnais blood. Her hopes were soon shattered by Fouché, who made an appeal to her. For the sake of the country, the dynasty, Napoleon, would she not herself voluntarily offer to withdraw. Panicstricken, yet not daring to go directly to her husband to know if this was his will, Josephine could only weep. Napoleon saw her sorrow, but had not the courage to talk with her. Finally Talleyrand, taking the case in hand, persuaded Josephine to speak first to Napoleon. Overcome completely, the Emperor feigned amazement, stormed at the baseness of Fouché, wept over Josephine, swore he could not leave her; but he did not deceive her—or himself. Josephine took a clever course—she told him she would consent to his will quietly for love of him and for the sake of the throne—if he commanded her. But that Napoleon could not do. He ordered that the question of divorce be dropped, gave Fouché such treatment as perhaps a man never before received for carrying out his superior’s will, and for a time bestowed upon Josephine lover-like attentions so marked that the whole court looked on and wondered.

EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

Fragment from the picture of the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte and the Princess Catherine.

The fall of 1807 the Emperor strove to make very gay, and during the sojourns at Rambouillet for the hunt and the month at Fontainebleau the Empress was really at the height of her power. He could not give her up, could not, in spite of his dynasty, in spite of Mme. Walewski, the woman who had sacrificed herself to him for the sake of Poland, and for whom he had a great respect as well as ardent passion. Josephine was necessary to him. It was a tenderness born of association—of all of the thousand sweet ties which twelve years of life together had wrought. What matter if she was growing old; what matter that he might have a royal princess for his wife—that his heart was with Mme. Walewski, it was Josephine, and no one ever had aroused such a wealth of tenderness as she—no one could again. The court could only look on and wonder to see the weakness of the tyrant before this woman. They even noted how jealous he was of her that fall, when the young German prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin fell in love with her and did not hesitate to show it. Josephine herself laughed at the young man’s ardor, but Napoleon looked askance and doubled his tenderness.

The winter of 1807 and 1808 was spent in Paris, and the shadow was not large. It was true that Mme. Walewski was now in the city; but if Josephine knew anything of this liaison, she ignored it completely. So long as she was Empress infidelities had little effect on her. Mme. de Remusat says that not only did Josephine shut her eyes to them, but she “pushed her complacency to the point of granting particular favors to some of his mistresses.” In the spring and summer her hold on the Emperor seemed to herself and to those about her to have been strengthened by the four and a half months which the two spent with only a small suite at Bayonne, where the Emperor’s presence was necessary to direct the affairs with Spain. Napoleon had preceded the Empress, who waited in Bordeaux for news of Hortense, to whom a third son was born on April 20, 1808. The news brought great joy to Josephine, and no doubt had something to do with her happiness in the next few months. It provided a second heir, and made divorce seem less imperative.

In spite of the sinister events of the sojourn at Bayonne—it was here that the King of Spain, Charles IV., and his heir, Ferdinand, abdicated their rights and that Joseph Bonaparte was made King of Spain—there was much gaiety around Josephine. There were dinners and fêtes and drives, and the French Empress and the Spanish Queen Louise seemed to enjoy each other’s society as if a throne were not changing hands and a noble house falling, because of the disgraceful inaction and jealousy of one ruler and the cynical ambition and self-confidence of the other.

The really delightful part of Josephine’s life at Bayonne was the informal intimacy which she and Napoleon enjoyed. Never since the days at Malmaison had they been together so long and so freely. They made the most of their liberty, even romping before the eyes of the members of their small suite in a most unroyal way. The Castle of Marrac, which they occupied, was near the shore, and they spent much time on the beach, where the Emperor, dragging the Empress to the water, would push her into it or dash sand over her, laughing like a teasing boy as he did so. In one of these romps the little, low silk slippers which the Empress always wore slipped off, and Napoleon, seizing them, threw them into the surf, making Josephine walk back to her carriage in stocking feet. It was with such frolics that the two enlivened the days at Marrac, in the summer of 1808. Their journey back to Paris was a triumphal procession, wherein Josephine, by her tact, her amiability, her unflagging interest, won every heart. Never had she seemed more admirable to Napoleon as an Empress, never more charming as a woman.

It was in August, 1808, that Josephine returned to Paris, after four and a half months with her husband. A few days later, he left her for Erfurth, where he was to meet Alexander of Russia and the German sovereigns, for a conference on the affairs of Europe. At a gathering of the magnitude and splendor of this at Erfurth it would have been fitting that the Empress be present, but Napoleon did not deem it wise for her to leave France. That Napoleon meant to indicate by leaving her at home that his decision to have a divorce was taken and that this was the beginning of the separation is not clear, though it is certain that the subject was much in his mind at Erfurth. The stability an heir would give to his throne and the value of an alliance with one of the old houses of Europe, now became clearer than ever to him, and undoubtedly Napoleon came back to Josephine with the idea more firmly fixed in mind than before. Those who saw them together after Erfurth said to themselves, “He is meditating the divorce again.” Josephine feared it. What else could mean his short brusque remarks, his evident desire to escape her company, his averted eyes.

Dread the future as she might, she could do nothing. To question Napoleon was to irritate him, and nothing, she knew, was more unwise. To show a sad face, to weep, was to drive him from her presence, for he detested tears with all the force of the strong reasoning controlled creature who sees nothing but a meaningless waste of strength in them. She knew too well the empire of Napoleon over all those about him to attempt to build up a party of her own that at the issue would throw its influence in her favor. There was but one thing to oppose to the imperious will of her husband—his affection for her. To cherish that, doing nothing of which he could complain, nothing which would irritate or weary him; to show him at every meeting her amiability, her devotion, her tact, to win from him the confession that no woman could fill more gracefully and successfully than she was doing her difficult position,—this was Josephine’s course, and the one which she followed ceaselessly after the interview in 1807. Certainly the fear was continually in her heart after Erfurth, but to him she gave no sign. She was gentle, apparently trusting; tactful, and cautious—the very qualities which Napoleon admired most in women and found rarest. Every day of intercourse made it harder for him to come to a resolution, and every day increased her own anxiety.

It was only ten days after Erfurth that the war in Spain compelled Napoleon to leave Paris. Josephine was left alone. There was little in the letters she received from Spain to disturb her peace of mind; as always, they gave her details of the Emperor’s health, expressed concern for hers, gave brief bits of news—optimistic always; rarely a word of a disaster was put into a letter to Josephine—directions about fêtes, about the reception of persons to be sent to her, comments and inquiries on family matters: such letters, in short, as she had always received. Yet there was an uneasiness in Josephine’s mind which she could not conquer;—it was fed by rumors from idle and more or less malicious tongues in her circle.

It was not only the uncertainty of her own fate which distressed her; she had further reason for grief in the unhappiness of Hortense, who had been reconciled with her husband for a time, but was now more wretched than ever, and whose frequent letters to Josephine must have cut her to the heart again and again. Her tenderness and her wisdom in her councils to her daughter at this time, indeed at all times, are admirable. It would not have been surprising if in receiving daily the complaints of Hortense, at a moment of so much uneasiness regarding her true situation, she had resented the misery of her daughter; but there is never a shadow of irritation in her letters.

In January, Josephine had the joy of seeing Napoleon return. For the two months and a half he was in Paris she watched him closely, but to no purpose. Indeed public affairs were in such a condition that the Emperor had little or no time to give her. He was working day and night in a frenzied effort to clear France of the traitors who, within his government, indeed within his own family, were plotting his overthrow, and to put an army in order for the war he saw Austria and her allies preparing for him. There was no time in the winter of 1808 and 1809 for the consideration of divorce and marriage, and if a decision for a divorce had been taken at Erfurth, the realization was far enough off. To all outward appearances, Josephine was safe. She was gratified, too, when the day of the Emperor’s departure came in April, by being allowed to accompany him as far as Strasburg, where she set up her court for the next few months. Here were soon gathered about her several of the family: Hortense, with her two little sons, the Queen of Westphalia, and the Grand Duchess of Baden. Here she received from the Emperor himself the first news of the succession of victories with which the campaign of 1809 opened. First it was Abensberg, then Eckmuhl, then Ratisbonne, that he recounted to her. It was a triumphal march, as always; but at Ratisbonne something happened which threw Josephine into consternation. Napoleon was hit by a ball. The news came to the Empress indirectly, and she hurriedly sent a courier to find out the actual condition of the wound. “The ball which hit me did not wound me,” he replied, “it scarcely grazed Achilles’ heel. My health is very good. It is wrong for you to worry. Everything is going well.”

Four days later, the Empress received a special courier from the Emperor, who announced to her the surrender of Vienna. Josephine was very happy. It argued well for a speedy end to the campaign. Her happiness was brief. The defeat at Essling, and the death of Marshall Lannes, filled her with foreboding. She, with many others of her day, looked on the career of the Emperor with superstitious awe. It was luck—a star. The charm broken, the star obscured, all would go. It is doubtful if Josephine, any more than hundreds of others who surrounded the Emperor, ever realized his stupendous genius or the gigantic efforts the man made to wrest victories from fate. It was the common story of one who spends himself in achievement, and in the end hears himself called a “lucky fellow”. After the defeat at Essling, Josephine discerned on every side the joy of Napoleon’s enemies, saw the alarm of his friends, heard in her own heart the knell of fate. To complete her misery, she feared she had offended the Emperor. Hortense, who had been at Strasburg for some time, was ordered by her physician to go to Baden for the waters. It was the Emperor’s order that no one of the royal family should change quarters without his consent. Hortense went to Baden without consulting him, taking with her the two young princes. The Emperor was irritated. “My daughter,” he wrote her less than a week after Essling, “I am dissatisfied to find that you have left France without my permission, and above all that you have taken my nephews away. Since you are at Baden, stay; but within an hour after you receive this letter, send my two nephews to Strasburg to the Empress. They must never leave France. It is the first time I have had any occasion to be dissatisfied with you, but you should never make any arrangements for my nephews without my consent. You must feel the bad effect that would have.”

This letter was sent to Hortense through Josephine, who opened it, thinking to have news herself from Napoleon, about whom she was greatly concerned. It was a new cause of worry. Would he not blame her for Hortense’s act? At least the two children had already been sent back to her—that was one reason for congratulation; but she hastened to write to Hortense urging her to try and appease the Emperor. Her anxiety became so great that her health began to give way, and she, too, had to leave Strasburg, in June, for treatment at Plombières, in the Vosges.

Josephine had been frequently before at Plombières, but certainly never before so quietly since she was Empress. The usual suite accompanied her, the same imposing livery, the same magnificent wardrobe, but no reception, no balls, no excursions marked her sojourn. She lived like a retired Empress almost—scattering charities everywhere, and amusing herself principally with her little grandsons, upon whom she lavished toys of every description in the profusion and extravagance with which she had always heaped jewels and finery upon herself. Daily she enjoyed Louis more. “I am so happy to have your son here,” she wrote Hortense. “He is charming, and I am becoming more and more attached to him.... His little reasonings amuse me exceedingly.”

JOSEPHINE, THE FIRST WIFE OF NAPOLEON.

Engraved by Audouin, after Laurent. This portrait “Joséphine impératrice des Français, reine d’Italie,” is surrounded by an elaborate frame of Imperial emblems. After the divorce, Josephine’s portrait was erased from the plate, and that of Marie Louise inserted.

The rapid recovery of fortune which followed the reverse at Essling soon reassured Josephine. She saw from Napoleon’s letters that, however his critics might feel that his star was waning, he himself had not lost courage. He scorned their exultation. “They have made an appointment to meet at my tomb,” he said, “but they’ll not dare carry it out.” His deeds verified his words. In rapid succession, he sent Josephine announcements of the series of victories which marked the latter half of June, 1809, and which culminated in Wagram on July 6th. A week later she received notice of the suspension of hostilities.

Once more the Empress breathed freely; Napoleon was safe, and he was victorious. Now his letters were longer, gayer, tenderer than they had been for many months. He rejoiced in the reports she sent him from Plombières of her gaining strength. “I am glad the waters are doing you so much good,” he wrote; and again, “I hear that you are stout, rosy, and looking very well.” He made no objection to the plans she suggested for herself. Stay at Plombières if she wished, why not; and when she is ready in August, go to Paris. If her letters are long in coming, he chides her. “I have received no letters from you for several days. The pleasures at Malmaison, the beautiful hot-houses and gardens, make you forget me. That’s the way it goes, they say.” As the time approached for his return—the negotiations at Schönbrunn which followed the war lasted into October—he began to show something like eagerness. Every day he sent a brief note of his coming return. “I’ll let you know twenty-four hours before my arrival.” “I shall make a fête of our reunion. I am waiting for the moment impatiently.” True, there was nothing of the lover in these daily bulletins (it was hardly to be expected when we remember that, during most of the campaign of 1809, Mme. de Walewski was living in a palace in Vienna, where Napoleon saw her constantly); but there was confidence, affection, interest; no sign at all of an approaching separation; and yet Napoleon undoubtedly left Schönbrunn in October persuaded that the divorce was a necessity and resolved to tell Josephine of his decision as soon as he arrived in France.

CHAPTER VIII
NAPOLEON RETURNS TO FRANCE—JOSEPHINE’S UNHAPPINESS—NAPOLEON’S VIEW OF A DIVORCE—THE WAY IN WHICH THE DIVORCE WAS EFFECTED

Unhappily for the Empress, her reunion with Napoleon was marred by a delay which irritated the Emperor no little. Josephine was at St. Cloud when she received a note, about October 24th or 25th, from Napoleon, saying he would be at Fontainebleau on the 26th or 27th, and that she had better go there with her suite. A later courier set the evening of the 27th as the time of his arrival. What was Josephine’s terror on having a messenger ride rapidly in from Fontainebleau on the afternoon of the 26th, saying the Emperor had arrived that morning and there had been no one but the concierge to meet him! It could not be denied that such a reception was a poor one for a conquering Emperor who now for the first time in six months set foot in his kingdom. Josephine feared, with reason, that Napoleon would be irritated, and now of all times when she needed so much to please him!

Post haste she drove to Fontainebleau. The Emperor did not come to meet her, and she was forced to mount to his library, where his scant welcome chilled her to the heart. He meant to announce the divorce then. She soon found, however, that it was the Emperor’s resentment at what he considered her fault in failing to meet him that caused his coldness. A trembling explanation, a few tears, and he was appeased, and they passed a happy evening.

Napoleon had taken quite another means, and a most disquieting one, to hint to Josephine that the divorce was under consideration. The apartments of the Emperor and Empress at Fontainebleau, as at other places, were connected by a private staircase. When Josephine looked about her suite, which had been newly decorated, she discovered that this passage had been sealed up. In consternation, she sought a friend of hers in Napoleon’s household, and asked why this had been done, by whose orders. She could get no satisfaction, nothing but evasive answers, halting explanations. Alarmed, yet fearing to approach the Emperor, she showed a troubled face and tear-stained eyes. Now, nothing ever had disturbed Napoleon more than to see Josephine in sorrow. The sight, and the knowledge of the cause, unnerved him now. He took a course characteristic of an autocratic man, accustomed to implicit obedience from associates, when he has determined to force some one he loves to do a distasteful act; he avoided Josephine’s presence, scarcely ever exchanged a word with her that the etiquette of the court did not require, rarely met her gaze. The Empress felt that his coldness could mean but one thing. She soon began to hear whispers of the decision in the court, for the Emperor had made his resolution known to several persons, and the necessary preparations were already making. Josephine could not but see, at the same time, that her enemies—the Bonaparte family and their allies—and those about her who were mere time-servers had changed materially in their attitude toward her. There was more than one lord or lady who did not hesitate to neglect, even slight, the Empress. She was a person whom it was no longer necessary to cultivate; and, besides, might not the Emperor take it as a compliment to his judgment to see that she whom he was to discard was ignored by his followers?

Josephine’s uncertainty as to precisely what the divorce meant made her alarm the greater. She undoubtedly saw in it at this time nothing but a disgrace and a punishment. She was to be cast out—her honors stripped from her, her friends driven away, her luxury at an end. Not only must she be separated from the Emperor, whom she loved and to whose happiness and success she believed superstitiously that she was necessary; but no doubt she would be driven from France. She saw herself in exile, poor, friendless, alone,—she who had been the Empress of France, the consort of Napoleon. And her children: her downfall meant theirs. Hortense, whose happiness had been wrecked by her marriage, what now would become of her? And Eugène, whom the Emperor had so loved and trusted and honored, what of him?

But Josephine’s idea of the divorce as a disgrace and punishment was not Napoleon’s. That he had never explained to her what he meant, was due to his own cowardice. In 1807, he had succumbed entirely, when the subject came up, and put the thought aside. Now he clung to his decision, but lacked courage to break it to her. He feigned irritation and coldness to hide his own faint-heartedness.

As a matter of fact, Napoleon regarded the divorce as a great state affair. To perpetuate France’s peace, stability, glory, an heir was necessary; therefore he and Josephine who loved each other parted. They suffered that France might live. The divorce then, was to be regarded as a sacrificial rite, and Josephine was to be placed before the country as a noble victim to whom the greatest honor then and ever should be shown. Such was Napoleon’s idea, and quietly, in this month after his return from Schönbrunn, he was preparing a ceremony which would put the affair in this light to the country. It was for this reason he summoned all the members of the Bonaparte and Beauharnais families from far and near; that he gathered in France all that was great in the Empire and among his allies; that he made Fontainebleau a veritable court of kings. To poor Josephine all of this looked like a cruel device to parade her grief and dishonor.

THE DIVORCE OF NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE.

About the middle of November, the court came to Paris; but still the Emperor delayed, he could not say the word. The constraint between the two became constantly greater; the suffering of both, it was evident to all their intimate friends, was increasing. At last, on November 30th, after a silent and wretched dinner, Napoleon led Josephine into a salon, dismissed their followers, and told her of his decision. Josephine grasping nothing in his broken words but that they were to be separated, burst into tears, and fell upon a couch, where she lay sobbing aloud. She was carried to her apartment, where her attendants vainly sought to check her wild grief. Nor was her calm restored until late in the evening, when Hortense came to her with an explanation of the situation, which seems to have been entirely new to her mind. The Emperor, overwhelmed by Josephine’s outburst, had strengthened his own mind by summoning immediately to his side certain advisors who favored the divorce. After talking with them, he had sent for Hortense, and begun rather brutally by telling her that tears would do no good, that he had made up his mind that the divorce was necessary to the safety of the Empire, and that she and her mother must accept it as inevitable. Hortense replied with dignity that the Empress, whatever her grief, would obey his will, and that she and Eugène would follow her into exile; that none of them would complain at their disgrace, that all would remember his past kindness. This seems to have been Napoleon’s first glimmer of the idea of the divorce which the Beauharnais entertained. He began to weep. “What!” he cried, “do you and Eugène mean to desert me? You must not do it, you must stay with me. Your position, the future of your children, require it. However cruel the divorce for both your mother and me, it must be consummated with the dignity which the circumstances require.” Everything which could be done to soften the situation for Josephine should be done, he said. She should remain the first in rank after the Empress on the throne. She should receive the honors due her sacrifice; she should remain in France. Her income should be fit for her rank, she should be given palaces, a retinue—all that a grateful France could do, in short, should be done. As for Hortense and Eugène, he looked upon them as his children, and should do for them as he would for his own.

This new idea of her fate had great effect on Josephine; and when her friends came to her to console her, weep as she might, she defended Napoleon, and presented the divorce as a sacrifice which they were together making for France. “The Emperor is as nearly heart-broken as I am,” she sobbed. “It cannot be helped. There must be an heir to consolidate the Empire.”

Now that Josephine knew his decision, Napoleon’s reserve and coldness passed. He gave her every attention, tried to anticipate every wish, enveloped her in tenderness. This change of demeanor surprised and confused the court, where as yet the divorce was a matter of conjecture to all save Napoleon’s confidential advisors. Had he changed his mind? As they saw the Empress smilingly going through the great fêtes, they began to say that after all he had not had the courage to make the separation. Napoleon’s kindly attitude seems to have given Josephine a hope that he had changed his mind. But a week after her interview with him, Eugène arrived in Paris, and she knew soon that divorce was inevitable and that the first steps were already taken to consummate it. Another distressing interview between herself and the Emperor followed, at which Eugène was present, and here again Napoleon promised her his care, his affection, a continued interest in her children. When she left this interview, she knew that in a few days more the court, Paris, France, would know of her fate. Overwhelmed as she was, weak with constant weeping in private, a prey to a hundred unreasonable fears as to her future, Josephine nevertheless went through her duties in these last days with a brave face and a sweet smile. Never did she win more favor from the better part of the court; never did she deserve it more than for her courage at this moment.

December 15th was set for the first act in the official part of the drama. At nine o’clock in the morning, Josephine went to the salon of the Emperor, accompanied by Eugène and Hortense. Here she found assembled all of the members of the Bonaparte family, who were in Paris, Napoleon, King Louis, King Jerome, King Murat and the Queens of Spain, Naples, and Westphalia, together with the French Arch-Chancellor and the Minister of State. The ceremony was opened at once by Napoleon. If any of the Bonapartes hoped to see Josephine humiliated at last, they must have been grievously disappointed. Every word of the Emperor was intended to place her in the eyes of France as its chief benefactor and friend—the woman who sacrificed herself for the country’s good. Napoleon’s remarks to the little company show exactly the interpretation he wished placed on the act, and there is no reason to believe that he was not sincere in what he said at this time. In a voice broken by agitation, he announced that he and the Empress had resolved to have their marriage annulled. Addressing the Arch-Chancellor, he said:

“I sent you a sealed letter dated to-day, directing you to come to my study, in order to make known to you the resolution that the Empress, my most dear wife, and I have taken. I am glad that the kings, queens, and princes, my brothers and sisters, my brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, my step-daughter and my step-son, my son by adoption, as well as my mother, are present at the interview. My politics, the interest and need of my people, which have always guided my actions, make it necessary that I should leave children behind me, heirs of my love for this people and of this throne where providence has placed me. However, I have abandoned all hope now for several years of having children by my beloved wife, the Empress Josephine. It is this which has led me to sacrifice the sweetest affections of my heart and to listen only to the idea of the good of the State, and consequently to dissolve our marriage. Arrived at the age of forty years, I dare hope that I shall live long enough to rear, according to my own ideas, the children that it shall please Providence to give me. God knows how much this resolution has cost me; but there is no sacrifice that is beyond my courage when I am convinced that it will be useful to France. I must add, that far from ever having had any reason to complain of my wife, I can only praise her love and tenderness. For fifteen years she has been the ornament of my life. The recollection will always remain engraved on my heart; she has been crowned by my hand, and I mean that she shall preserve the rank and title of Empress, and I hope that above all she will never doubt my feelings toward her and that she will always consider me her best and truest friend.”

When the Emperor ceased to speak, Josephine attempted to read the little address which had been prepared for her, but her voice failed her, and she passed her paper to one of the party:—

“With the permission of my august and dear husband,” so her speech read, “I declare that having given up all hope of bearing the children which would satisfy the political needs and the welfare of France, I am glad to give to him the greatest proof of attachment and devotion which has ever been given in this world. All that I have I hold because of his goodness; it was his hand which crowned me, and from my throne I have received only affection and love from the French people. I believe I am showing my gratitude for these benefits by consenting to the dissolution of a marriage which henceforth is an obstacle to the welfare of France, which deprives her of the happiness of being one day governed by the descendants so evidently raised up by Providence to wipe out the evils of a terrible revolution and reëstablish the altar, throne, and social order; but the dissolution of my marriage can never change the feelings of my heart. In me the Emperor will always have his best friend. I know how much this act, demanded by politics and by high interests, has wounded his heart, but we both glory in the sacrifice that we make for the good of the country.”

The day following this scene, the necessary formalities were gone through in the Senate. Eugène, then Viceroy of Italy, took the oath of Senator that day, and later spoke on the divorce. The interpretation he gave of the separation was that which Napoleon had devised. “You have just listened to the reading of the project which the Senate submits to you for deliberation,” Eugène said. “Under the circumstances, I think that it is my duty to express to you the feelings of my family. My mother, my sister, and myself owe everything to the Emperor; he has been a veritable father to us; he will find in us at all times devoted children and submissive subjects. It is essential to the happiness of France that the founder of this fourth dynasty should be surrounded by direct descendants who will be a guarantee to everybody, a safeguard of the people, of the country. When my mother was crowned before the whole nation by the hands of her august husband, she contracted the obligation to sacrifice all her affections to the good of France; she has fulfilled her duty with courage, nobility, and dignity; her heart has often been wrung by the painful struggles of a man accustomed to conquer fortune and to march forward always with a firm step toward the accomplishment of great designs. The tears that this resolution has cost the Emperor are sufficient to glorify my mother. In her new situation she will not be a stranger to the new prosperity that we expect, and it will be with a satisfaction mingled with pride that she will look upon the happiness that her sacrifices have brought to the country and to the Emperor.”

The articles annulling the marriage and fixing Josephine’s future state were passed at the same session. They read:—

Article I. The marriage contracted between the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Josephine is hereby dissolved.

Article II. The Empress Josephine will preserve the title and the rank of a crowned Empress.

Article III. Her annual income is fixed at two million francs [$400,000], to be paid from the treasury of the State.

Article IV. All the obligations taken by the Emperor for the Empress Josephine out of the public treasury are obligatory upon his successors.

Article V. The present senatus-consulte shall be sent by a messenger to Her Majesty, the Empress Queen.

That afternoon Napoleon, after a heart-breaking scene with Josephine, left the Tuileries for the Trianon. A few hours later Josephine, exhausted by weeping, entered her carriage, and in a heavy storm was driven to Malmaison.

CHAPTER IX
AFTER THE DIVORCE—NAVARRE—JOSEPHINE’S SUSPICIONS OF THE EMPEROR—HER GRADUAL RETURN TO HAPPINESS

Although divorced, Josephine was still Empress of the French People, and her income and her position were in keeping with her title. By the decree of the Senate, her income was fixed at 2,000,000 francs ($400,000), but the Emperor found means of increasing this, by making her many splendid presents, and by ordering that any unusual outlay, such as that for repairs at Malmaison, be paid from the civil list. She was to have three separate homes: Malmaison, always her favorite residence, upon the chateau and grounds of which she had for years lavished money, and in which she had carried out every fantasy of building, decoration and gardening, that entered her head; the Elysée Palace in Paris, at present the residence of the presidents of the French Republic; and Navarre, a chateau near Evreux.

Not only did Josephine receive money and property; Napoleon took care that her suite was in keeping with her rank. It was as large, indeed, as that of many of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, and included some of the cleverest and wittiest men and women of France. To the Emperor’s honor, the persons chosen were all of them in sympathy with the Empress and loved by her. More than one of those in Josephine’s household, indeed, would have been welcomed in the suite of Marie Louise; but being offered their choice, remained with Josephine. Mme. de Remusat was a notable example. She stayed with Josephine solely because of her affection and sense of loyalty and in spite of the fact that her husband was the First Chamberlain of Napoleon.

If Josephine had any idea that her divorce was going to separate her from Paris and the society of her friends, she immediately found out her mistake. The day after her arrival at Malmaison, in spite of a heavy shower, the road from Paris was one long line of carriages of persons hastening to the chateau to pay her their respects. Those persons who did stay away because uncertain whether the Emperor was sincere in his declaration that Josephine was to keep her rank as Empress had to submit to severe reproofs. “Have you been to see the Empress Josephine?” he began to ask, after a day or two, and if the courtier said no, the Emperor frowned and said, “You must go, sir!” And as a result everybody did go, and continued to go. Indeed, later in the winter, when Josephine came to the Elysée for a short time, her house was a veritable court.

But Josephine had received a blow which wealth, rank, and friends could not cure. The man who once had wearied her by his passion and who had had to beg and threaten to persuade her to pass a week with him in Italy, had in turn become the object of as passionate affection as she was capable of feeling. She had for years now regarded his slightest wish. In devoting herself to Napoleon in order to save her position she had learned to love him. Her pain now was the greater because she could not believe that Napoleon meant it when he said that he still should love and protect her and that he should honor her for her sacrifice as never before. She seemed to feel that, after she had said good-by to him at the Tuileries, she would never see him again. She gave way utterly to her grief, weeping night and day. Napoleon kept his word, however. Two days after her arrival at Malmaison he came to see her and frequently in the days that followed, up to the time of his marriage with Marie Louise, at the end of March, he made her little visits. They were always formal, in the presence of attendants, but they did much to persuade the Empress that Napoleon intended to keep his promises to her. After every visit however, came paroxysms of weeping. Napoleon kept himself informed of Josephine’s state, and wrote her frequent notes, chiding her for this weakness, assuring her of his love, and begging her to have courage.

“I found you weaker than you should have been,” he wrote one day. “You have shown some courage; you must find a way of keeping it up. You must not give up to melancholy, you must try to be contented, and above all, take care of your health, which is so precious to me. If you love me, you ought to try to be strong and happy. You must not doubt my constant and tender friendship. You misunderstand entirely my feelings if you suppose that I can be happy when you are not happy, and above all, when you are not contented.”

“Savary told me that you were weeping yesterday,” he wrote another day. “I hope that you have been able to go out to-day. I am sending you the results of my hunt yesterday. I will come to see you just as soon as you will promise me that you have regained your self-control and that your courage has the upper hand. Good-by, dear; I am sad to-day, too, for I have need of knowing that you are satisfied and courageous.”

After returning to the Tuileries, he wrote her:—“Eugène told me that you were sad yesterday. That is not well, dear; it is contrary to what you promised me. It has been a sorrow to me to see the Tuileries again; the great palace seems empty, and I am lost here.”

The visits, the gifts, the letters of the Emperor really made the Empress worse rather than better; and finally Mme. de Remusat took the matter in hand.

“The Empress passed a most unhappy morning,” she wrote to her husband; “she received a few visits which only increased her grief, and then every time anything comes from the Emperor she goes off into a terrible paroxysm. Some way must be found to persuade the Emperor to moderate his expressions of regret and affection, for whenever he gives a sign of his own sadness she falls into despair, and really her head seems turned. I take care of her as well as I can, but she causes me the greatest sorrow. She is sweet, suffering, affectionate; in fact, everything that is calculated to tear one’s heart. In showing his affection, the Emperor only makes her worse. However she suffers, there is never a complaint escapes her; she is really as gentle as an angel.... Try, if you can, to have the Emperor write to her so as to encourage her, and let him never send anything in the evening, because that gives her a terrible night. She cannot endure his expressions of regret. Doubtless, she could endure coldness still less, but there must be a medium way. She was in such a state yesterday after the last letter of the Emperor that I was on the point of writing him myself at the Trianon.”

As time went on and Josephine found that she really had no reason to suspect the Emperor of withdrawing the friendship he had promised, she began to imagine that he meant to keep her always at Malmaison, never to allow her to go again to Paris. This alarm probably was due to gossip that reached her. She no doubt would have preferred remaining at Malmaison if this fear had not arisen. She was so overcome by suspicion that she tested his sincerity by asking permission to go to Paris. She did this in spite of the fact that the talk of the forthcoming marriage—not yet settled, but in full negotiation—was in everybody’s mouth. The Emperor’s reply to her request was kind. “I shall be glad to know that you are at the Elysée, and happy to see you oftener, for you know how much I love you.” In the course of this correspondence about her coming he could not help scolding her a little, however. “I have just told Eugène that you would rather listen to the gossip of the town than to what I tell you.”

And yet, even in this period of distress, Josephine was not idle; nor was she so selfish in her grief that she forgot her friends. Napoleon’s letters to her record more than one promise of a favor she had asked for somebody. She even interested herself actively in securing a princess for the Emperor. Summoning the Countess de Metternich of Austria, just arrived in Paris, she told her frankly that she should consider the sacrifice she had made a pure waste if the Emperor did not marry the Archduchess of Austria. At that time Napoleon had not decided on his future Empress; but the negotiations thus opened by Josephine enabled Metternich to prepare the way in Austria so that, when the time came, there were none of the delays which had irritated Napoleon in applying for the hand of the Russian princess as he did first. The negotiations for the hand of Marie Louise terminated favorably, and the wedding was set for March.

As the day drew near, a sense of the impropriety of Josephine remaining at Malmaison during the ceremonies, grew on Napoleon, and he asked her to spend the month of April at Navarre. She arrived there the very day that Marie Louise entered Paris. Navarre was not an attractive place to take possession of with a large household like Josephine’s at that season of the year, and the company, used to the luxury of Malmaison, found themselves obliged to camp out in great discomfort in an old, damp, half-furnished chateau, where neither doors nor windows would shut securely and where every chimney smoked. Repairs were quickly made, however, and furniture in quantities was sent from Paris. In the interval, the whole suite seems to have endured the experience good-naturedly, and Josephine made a really brave effort to adapt herself to her new situation and to forget her grief. She set herself to finding out the resources of her new estate, driving daily through the parks; she superintended the gardens, planned repairs and improvements in the chateau, looked up the poor and sick, invited in the people of Evreux whom she wanted to know, and every night played her favorite game of tric-trac with the bishop of the diocese. It was a good beginning for a useful and eventually a happy life for her, and all would have gone very well if she could have dismissed the idea that after all Napoleon did not mean to keep his promises to her—that it was only a question of time when he would lose his interest, withdraw his support, drive her from France.

Two weeks passed after the marriage, and no word came to her from the Emperor. In the meantime, she was receiving letters from Eugène and Hortense, who were required to be present at the ceremonies, and every member of her suite had daily bulletins of the gaieties at the capital and of its gossip. Hints reached her that it was probable the Emperor would not consider it proper for her to return soon to Malmaison, if he did at all. Her worry became a veritable panic, and before she had been three weeks at Navarre, she asked permission to return to Malmaison. It was granted at once; thereupon she sent the Emperor a stilted letter of thanks. Her letter and the reply it brought from the Emperor are excellent examples of the masculine and feminine ways of looking at the same situation. Josephine’s letter read:—

Sire:—I have just received from my son the assurance that your Majesty consents to my return to Malmaison and that you have been good enough to advance to me the money that I have asked to make the Chateau of Navarre habitable. This double favor, Sire, dissipates largely the unrest and even the fears that the long silence of your Majesty had awakened. I was afraid of being entirely banished from your mind; I see that I have not been. I am less unhappy to-day in consequence; I am even as happy as it will ever be possible for me to be.

At the end of the month I shall go to Malmaison since your Majesty sees no objection to it, but I should say to you, Sire, that I should not so soon take advantage of the liberty which your Majesty has given me if the house at Navarre did not need so many repairs, both on account of my health and that of my suite. My plan is to stay at Malmaison a very short time. I shall soon go to the Springs. But while I am at Malmaison your Majesty may be sure I shall live as if I were a thousand leagues from Paris. I have made a great sacrifice, Sire and each day I feel it more. However, this sacrifice shall be complete; your Majesty shall not be disturbed in your happiness by any expression of regrets on my part. I shall pray ceaselessly for your Majesty’s happiness, but your Majesty may be sure that I shall always respect his new situation; I shall respect it in silence, having confidence in the feeling that he once had for me. I shall not try to awaken any new proof of it; I shall trust in your justice and in your heart. I ask but one favor; it is that your Majesty shall deign to give me now and then some proof that I have a small place in your thoughts and a large place in your esteem and your friendship. This will soften my grief without, it seems to me, compromising that which is much more important than all to me, the happiness of your Majesty.

Josephine.

Napoleon replied:—

My Dear:—I received your letter of the 19th of April. The style is very bad. I am always the same; men like me never change. I do not know what Eugène could have said to you. I did not write you because you had not written me; my only desire is to be agreeable to you. I am glad that you are going to Malmaison and that you are contented. I shall go there to find out how you are and to give you news of myself. Now compare this letter with yours, and after that I will let you judge which is the more friendly, yours or mine. Good-bye, my dear. Take care of yourself, and be just to yourself and to me.

Napoleon.

Having permission to return to Malmaison, Josephine was satisfied to remain at Navarre. In fact, she was beginning to enjoy the place and particularly the plans for its improvements. It was not until May that she returned to Malmaison, where she remained a month. Later she spent three months at Aix-En-Savoy and then made a trip in Switzerland.

On the whole, the summer and fall of 1810 were not unpleasant. She had dismissed, for the time, her doubt of the Emperor, and suffered only from the separation from him. That separation Napoleon did as much as the situation allowed to soften. In May, after her return to Malmaison, he went to see her, and the visit seems to have been as free from restraint and grief as could be expected. Josephine was greatly pleased by the Emperor’s attention. “Yesterday was a day of joy for me,” she wrote to Hortense. “The Emperor came to see me. His presence made me happy, though it awakened my sorrow. As long as he stayed with me I had the courage to keep back my tears, but when he was gone, I was not able to restrain them, and I found myself very wretched. He was as good as ever to me, and I hope he read in my heart all the devotion and tenderness I feel for him.”

Not only did Napoleon go to visit her, he conceived a notion incomprehensible to a feminine mind of some day taking Marie Louise, and broached the subject one day as the two were driving near Malmaison in Josephine’s absence, by asking the Empress if she would not like to go over the chateau. Marie Louise immediately began to cry, and Napoleon, overwhelmed by what he had done, though probably not understanding at all, never ventured to go further. He probably saw no reason why the two women could not in private be friends.

Everywhere that Josephine went in these first journeys after her divorce she was received with such expressions of devotion and interest that she must have been convinced that the people had adopted the Emperor’s view of the divorce and looked upon her as one who had sacrificed herself for the country. Curiously enough, they brought petitions to her praying her to remit them to the Emperor; her influence over him and her relation to him were thus publicly acknowledged. In all the interviews Josephine gave to persons who sought her as she traveled she was exceedingly discreet; especially admirable was the way in which she talked of the Emperor. It was as of a brother whom she loved dearly and whose interests she had deeply at heart. Although, as a rule, she received cordially all who sought her, she did refuse, if she believed the person hostile to Napoleon. In September, while Josephine was in Switzerland, Mme. de Staël, then in exile, tried to secure an interview. Josephine declined. “I know her too well,” she said, “to wish an interview. In the first book she published, she would report our conversation, and the Lord only knows how many things she would make me say of which I never thought.”

EUGÉNIE HORTENSE DE BEAUHARNAIS. 1783–1837.

Daughter of Josephine, wife of Louis, King of Holland, and mother of Napoleon III.

One real and serious cause of unhappiness for Josephine was removed in part this summer. It was her daughter Hortense’s trouble. The poor Queen of Holland had for a long time been hopelessly embroiled with the King, Louis Bonaparte, and her daily letters to her mother during the winter and spring were hysterical cries of bitterness and despair. Josephine shows nowhere in better light than in her replies. During all this period of her own sorrow she wrote constantly to Hortense letters full of cheer, of wise counsel, and of the tenderest affection. The doubt of the Emperor which seized her now and then she never allowed Hortense to entertain. She never advised anything but courage and forbearance in her relations to King Louis. She held before her her duty to her little sons, to the people of Holland, who had always loved her, and to her mother. In July, Louis put an end to the sad situation by abdicating his throne, which by the Constitution went to the Queen. Napoleon promptly annexed Holland to France. “This emancipates the queen,” the Emperor wrote to Josephine, “and your unhappy daughter can come to Paris, where, with her sons, she will be perfectly happy.” It was not going to Paris, however, that pleased Hortense; it was release from Louis, the care of her sons, and rejoining her mother. Indeed, Louis Bonaparte’s cowardly conduct in Holland brought great relief to both Hortense and Josephine, especially was the latter happy at being able to have the children, Napoleon Louis and Louis Napoleon, or little Oui-oui, as she called him, (afterwards Napoleon III.) with her. She really was an ideal grandmother, everybody conceded, the children first of all. Their opinion was happily expressed once by Louis, who, when a lady of the court was leaving to see her husband, said soberly, “She must love M. A—— very much if she will leave grandmama to go and see him.”

When Josephine left Malmaison in June, she had intended traveling in Italy, after Switzerland, and spending the winter at Milan with her son. Her old terror of being forgotten by the Emperor and driven from France seized her in September, however, and for weeks she tormented herself with the notion that it was Napoleon’s plan not to allow her to return to France. She had no reason for the supposition beyond the gossip which came to her and the fears of her own sore heart; but this was enough to persuade her so thoroughly that she was to be exiled that her health began to fail. She succeeded, too, in communicating her fears to the ladies of her suite, and the little company made themselves wretched in the classical feminine way over a possibility for which there was no foundation whatever.

LOUIS BONAPARTE. 1778–1846.

King of Holland in 1806. Abdicated in 1810, taking the title of Comte de St. Leu.

Finally, Josephine wrote a humble letter to Napoleon, asking permission to spend the winter at Navarre. He replied at once, that of course she might go there if she would. The household were thrown in hysterical transports of joy by this permission, and they hastened northward for a long winter in a provincial chateau as if Italy was a prison and the honors they would have received there mockery and insult.

In spite of the fact that Navarre was not a suitable winter residence even when in the best condition, and that the changes and repairs planned were still incomplete, Josephine and her household passed a really happy winter and spring there. The life was a simple and wholesome one, free from the exacting ceremonies and the tiresome restraints of the court, and the health of them all, and notably of Josephine, improved. Instead of late hours and heated rooms and great crowds, there were the healthy habits of the country, constant outdoor sports, the plain people of Evreux. Josephine found the headaches, which for so long a time had tormented her, almost totally disappearing. As her health improved she wept less, and her eyes, which she had seriously injured since the divorce, by her constant tears, grew better. The unfailing sweetness of her disposition in her trial had, up to this time, been combined with such weakness and suspicions that its beauty had been obscured. When, one after another, her alarms proved to be unfounded; when each time she found she received what she asked; when Napoleon continued to write her as a dear friend, to visit her from time to time, to do for her children; when, after the birth of the King of Rome, he even arranged that she should see the child, and when from every side she continued to hear praise for her sacrifice which had made an heir possible, she took courage. With the return of peace to her distracted heart, she began to fill her life fuller of useful and pleasant occupations. She established a school at Navarre, where poor children were taught; she improved the town promenade, and built a little theater; she fed the hungry, cared for the sick; proved herself, indeed, a veritable providence to the whole country-side.

NAPOLEON AND THE KING OF ROME.

Bronze from the collection of Prince Victor. This elegant figure is a faithful reproduction of a medallion made by Andrieu, on the birth of the King of Rome.

In her own family, too, she was a good genius. Hortense was now at the court of Marie Louise, and Josephine was as ever her confidant and adviser. The two little princes she kept much with her, relieving Hortense of their care. Napoleon was particularly pleased with this arrangement, knowing how much it would do to make Josephine happy, and feeling, too, that her training was an excellent thing for the lads. Even when the children were with Hortense, much of her time was taken up with providing playthings for them and for the little folks at Milan. Mlle. Ducrest says that the salon at Malmaison often looked like a warehouse in the Rue du Coq, so full was it of toys, and there was no surer way of pleasing Josephine than admiring the trifles she was constantly buying for her grandchildren.

Eugène frequently made brief visits to Napoleon, and Josephine’s pride in him and in the place he held in the Emperor’s respect and affection was great. She rejoiced that Eugène was happy in his married life, loved his wife, the good and beautiful Augusta, daughter of the King of Bavaria; and when she went to Italy to visit the court at Milan, as she did in Eugène’s absence in 1812, at the confinement of the princess, she came away with her heart abrim with maternal joy.

Indeed, Josephine grew more and more beloved throughout the years 1811 and 1812 as she added cheerfulness and courage to her amiability. “You are adored at Milan,” wrote Eugène to her once. “They are writing me charming things about you. You turn the head of everybody who comes near you.” Even Marie Louise laid aside her jealousy of Josephine after the birth of the King of Rome, and by many little attentions to Hortense added to Josephine’s happiness. She was something in France, she felt; she was honored, her place was secure.

Nobody was better satisfied than Napoleon himself at seeing Josephine take the position he had conceived she should have, and her returning cheerfulness was a constant pleasure to him. Only one subject of contention seems to have occurred between them at this period that was the old one of Josephine’s extravagance. She could not be persuaded to live within her income, and finally Napoleon took the matter rigorously in hand, writing to the Minister of the Public Exchequer the following letter:—

1st November, 1811.

You will do well to send privately for the Empress Josephine’s comptroller and make him aware that nothing will be paid over to him, unless proof is furnished that there are no debts; and, as I will have no shilly-shallying on the subject, this must be guaranteed on the comptroller’s own property. You will therefore notify the comptroller, that from the 1st of January next, no payment will be made, either in your office, or by the Crown Treasury, until he has given an undertaking that no debts exist, and made his own property responsible for the fact. I have information that the expenditure in that household is exceedingly careless. You will, therefore, see the comptroller, and put yourself in possession of all facts regarding money matters; for it is absurd that instead of saving two millions of money, as the Empress should have done, she should have more debts to be paid. It will be easy for you to find out the truth about this from the comptroller, and to make him understand that he himself might be seriously compromised.

Take an opportunity of seeing the Empress Josephine yourself, and give her to understand that I trust her household will be managed with more economy, and that if any debts are left outstanding, she will incur my sovereign displeasure. The Empress Louise has only 100 000 crowns; she pays everything every week; she does without gowns, and denies herself, so as never to owe money.

My intention is, then, that from the 1st of January, no payment shall be made for the Empress Josephine’s household without a certificate from the comptroller, to the effect that she has no debts. Look into her budget for 1811, and that prepared for 1812. It should not amount to more than a million. If too many horses are kept, some of them must be put down. The Empress Josephine, who has children and grandchildren, ought to economise, and so be of some use to them, instead of running into debt.

I desire you will not make any more payments to Queen Hortense, either on account of her appanage, or for wood-felling, without asking my permission. Confer with her comptroller too, so that her household may be properly managed, and that she may not only keep out of debt, but regulate her expenditure in a fitting manner.

CHAPTER X
EFFECT ON JOSEPHINE OF DISASTERS IN RUSSIA—ANXIETY DURING CAMPAIGN OF 1813—FLIGHT FROM PARIS—DEATH IN 1814

By the spring of 1812 Josephine had adjusted herself admirably to her new life. She had conquered her suspicions, acquired self-control, taken up useful duties. Her position was recognized by all France. In every quarter she was loved and honored. Never indeed in all her disordered, changeful existence was she so worthy of respect and affection. With every week her power of self-control, her capacity for happiness seemed to grow. In the spring she spent some time with Hortense at the chateau of Saint Leu, the latter’s country home. After she returned to Malmaison, she wrote back a letter which shows to what a large degree she had regained contentment. “The few days I spent with you,” she wrote Hortense, “were very happy, and did me great good. Everybody who comes to see me says that I never looked better, and I am not surprised at it. My health always depends on my experiences, and those with you were sweet and happy.”

In June, the campaign against Russia, for which Napoleon had been preparing for several months, began; but there is no indication that Josephine had any anxiety in seeing the Grand Army set out. Had she not seen the Emperor return from Italy, from Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram? In July she went to Milan, to remain with the Princess Augusta, Eugène’s wife, through her confinement. She seemed to get great pleasure from her visit. The princess she found charming, the children could not be better, everybody treated her with a consideration and an affection which touched her deeply. She seems to have been happy at Milan for the most natural, wholesome reasons—because her son’s wife is a good woman and loves her husband; because the new granddaughter is a healthy child; because the good people of Milan remember her, and love her.

Josephine took great satisfaction at this time, too, in Eugène’s success. He was, in fact, justifying fully in Russia the good opinion the Emperor had always had of him, and his letters to his mother were almost exultant. “The Emperor gained a great victory over the Russians to-day,” he wrote her on September 8th. “We fought for thirteen hours, and I commanded the left. We all did our duty, and I hope the Emperor is satisfied.” And again, “I write you only two words, my good mother, to tell you that I am well. My corps had a brilliant day yesterday. I had to deal with eight divisions of the enemy from morning until night, and I kept my position. The Emperor is pleased, and you can believe that I am.”

But the joy of victory was not long continued. Moscow was entered on September 15th, 1812. The exultation that the capture of the enemy’s capital caused in France was short-lived. Close upon it came reports of the burning of the city, of the awful cost of the march inland, of the suffering the army was undergoing. When Josephine reached Paris in October, the city was full of sinister reports of defeat. A plot to seize the government, based on a report of Napoleon’s death, had just been suppressed. Her letters from Eugène had talked only of victory. What could it mean? As she listened to the reports afloat and came under the spell of the city’s foreboding, a deadly despair seized her. At the mere mention of Napoleon’s name she wept. Her face carried such woe that her household feared that worse evils had befallen them than they knew of, and Malmaison for weeks was wrapped in gloom.

EUGENE DE BEAUHARNAIS, NAPOLEON’S STEPSON. (“EUGENIO NAPOLEONE, PRINCE DI FRANCIA, VICE RE D’ITALIA, 1813.”)
Engraved by Longhi, after Gérard, Milan, 1813.

This was her condition when suddenly it was reported that Napoleon had returned unannounced from Russia. Amazed at the extent of the conspiracy which had arisen in his absence and at the instability of the throne at the mere report of his own death, and fearing still more serious results when the full news of the catastrophe in Russia reached France, the Emperor had driven night and day across Europe to Paris. His presence inspired courage, but it could not close the ears of France to the ghastly stories of the retreat from Moscow, nor blind her eyes to the haggard remnants of men who daily flocked into the city. There was an appearance of gaiety, because the Emperor ordered it; but there was little heart in the winter’s merry-making.

Napoleon’s return did not restore Josephine’s confidence. Her superstition, always lively, asserted itself to the full. The first day of the new year, 1813, was on Friday. Josephine’s presentiments were the darkest. This year would bring Napoleon sorrow and loss, she declared. France was to suffer. Nothing could restore her calm. In all this grief the thought was ever present with her that the divorce was the cause of Napoleon’s misfortunes. He had destroyed his Star. Nor was she by any means alone in this theory. Indeed, it is probable that she had adopted it from others, for many people in France had always believed it. Even in the Grand Army, during the campaign against Russia, soldiers said, after reverses began, that it was because of the divorce. “He shouldn’t have left the old girl,” they put it; “she brought him luck—and us too.”

In the spring of 1813, the Emperor was off again at the head of the army which by feverish efforts he had gathered and equipped. Josephine saw the new campaign begin with foreboding; she watched its doubtful progress with growing dismay, and finally when in November, the French army, defeated, and with its allies daily deserting, crossed the Rhine, her anguish was pitiful. Napoleon’s name was incessantly on her lips, and of everybody who came within her range that knew anything of him she asked a hundred eager questions. How did he look? Was he pale? Did he sleep? Did he believe his Star had deserted him?

When Eugène’s father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, abandoned his alliance with the Emperor, Josephine urged upon her son loyalty and energy; and when Louis Bonaparte moved by his brother’s misfortunes, hurried to offer his services, Josephine pointed out to Hortense, who, she thought, might reasonably expect new annoyance if Louis’s offer was accepted, that her husband’s act was a noble one and that Hortense should view it so. Hortense seems as a matter of fact, to have felt more respect for her husband when she heard of his offer to return than she had for many years.

During the advance of the allies towards Paris and the wonderful resistance Napoleon offered for many weeks, Josephine remained at Malmaison feverishly questioning everybody who came. As the battles grew nearer, she interested herself in hospital work, and set her household to making lint. Now and then she received a note from the Emperor—a characteristic note of triumph—never of fear or complaint. These notes she always retired to read and to weep over, and afterwards she spent hours talking of them to her women.

As the end of March approached the allies were so near Paris that Josephine saw bodies of strangely uniformed men passing and repassing near Malmaison—Cossacks, Austrians, Prussians. What could it all mean? Hortense, at the court of Marie Louise, sent her daily notes, telling her of the hopes and fears of Paris. Invariably these notes were courageous, showing perfect confidence in the final triumph of Napoleon. When at last, on March 28th, Hortense learned that Marie Louise and the court were leaving the city, her indignation was intense. She could do nothing, however. It was her duty to accompany Marie Louise, and she had only time before departing to send a note to Josephine, urging her to go to Navarre.

“My dear Hortense,” Josephine replied, “up to the moment I received your letter I kept my courage. I cannot endure the thought that I am to be separated from you, and God knows for how long! I am following your counsel; I shall go to-morrow to Navarre. I have only sixteen men in my guard here, and they are all wounded. I shall keep them; but as a matter of fact, I do not need them. I am so wretched at being separated from my children that I am indifferent about what happens to myself. Try to send me word how you are, what you will do, and where you will go. I shall try to follow you from afar, at least.”

Early on March 29th, the little household started through rain and mud. Josephine’s terror was complete. She fancied she would be waylaid by Cossacks; and once when she saw a band of soldiers approaching, she jumped from her carriage, and fled across the fields alone. It was with difficulty that her attendants convinced her that the strangers were French, not foreign soldiers.

Once at Navarre, she spent much of her time alone—a practice quite unlike her,—reading and re-reading Napoleon’s letters. One of them she carried always in her bosom. It had been sent from Brienne, only a short time before the abdication, and contained the most touching expressions of his affection for her to be found in any of his later letters: “I have sought death in numberless engagements; I no longer dread its approach; I should now hail it as a boon.... Nevertheless, I still wish to see Josephine once more.”

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A few days after Josephine’s arrival at Navarre, Hortense joined her, and there the two learned of Napoleon’s abdication and of the return of the Bourbons. After the first paroxysm of grief was over, they began planning for the future. Hortense would go to America, with her children, she declared. There she could rear them so that they would be fit for any future. But Josephine was not for renouncing her position. She began to write feverishly in every direction, apparently hoping to interest her friends in saving something for her in the general overthrow. The allies had no disposition, however, to take from Josephine either her rank or all her income. The Emperor Alexander, who was the real umpire of the game, believed it wise to look after the material interests of the Bonaparte family, and in the treaty arranged that Josephine should have an annual income of 1,000,000 francs and that she should keep all of her property, disposing of it as she pleased. Alexander showed a strong desire to win Josephine’s favor, in fact. Learning that she was at Navarre, he invited her to Malmaison, giving her every assurance that she would be safe there. Before the end of April, she came with Hortense, and here Eugene joined them. Alexander soon came to Malmaison to see the Empress. His attentions to her set the vogue for the court, and repeated assurances came from all sides to Josephine that her position and that of her children was safe with the new régime. But Josephine could not believe it so. Her days and nights were full of foreboding—of laments over the fate of the Emperor. One day, after dining with Alexander at the Chateau of St. Leu, she returned to her room in complete collapse.

“I cannot overcome the frightful sadness which has taken possession of me,” she said. “I make every effort to conceal it from my children, but only suffer the more. I am beginning to lose my courage. The Emperor of Russia has certainly shown great regard and affection for us, but it is nothing but words. What will he decide to do with my son, my daughter and her children? Is he not in a position to do something for them? Do you know what will happen when he has gone away? Nothing he has promised will be carried out. I shall see my children unhappy, and I cannot endure the idea; it causes me the most dreadful suffering. I am suffering enough already on account of the fate of the Emperor Napoleon, stripped of all his greatness, sent into an island far from France, abandoned. Must I, besides this, see my children wanderers? Stripped of fortune? It seems to me this idea is going to kill me.... Is it Austria who opposes my son’s advancement? Is it the Bourbons? Certainly they are under obligations enough to me to be willing to pay them by helping my children. Have I not been good to all of their party in their misfortunes? To be sure, I never imagined they would come back to France; nevertheless, it pleased me to be their friend; they were Frenchmen, they were suffering, they were former acquaintances, and the position of those princes that I had seen in their youth touched my heart. Did I not ask Bonaparte twenty times to let the Duchess of Orleans and the Duchess of Bourbon come back? It was through me that he succored them in their distress, that he allowed them a pension which they received in a foreign country.”

The attention paid her by the allies seemed to leave no ground for any of these anxieties. The King of Prussia and his sons, the grand-dukes of Russia, every great man in Paris, in fact, sought Josephine repeatedly. She distrusted it all, and one moment wept over the fate of herself and children; the next over Napoleon alone on his island—repeatedly she declared she would join him if she did not fear it would cause a misunderstanding between him and Marie Louise, and so prevent the latter from going to Elba, as Josephine thought she ought to do. In her nervous state she searched for signs of the neglect and discourtesy which she believed were in store for her. She planned to sell her jewels. Everyone in the household became thoroughly disturbed over her condition. “My mother is courageous and amiable, when she is receiving,” Hortense said one day; “but as soon as she is alone, she gives up to a grief which is my despair. I am afraid that the misfortunes which have fallen upon us have affected her too deeply and that her health will never reassert itself.”

Josephine was in this nervous condition when she took a severe cold, and on May 25th her condition was so serious that the best physicians of Paris were summoned. The Emperor of Russia sent his private physician, and went himself frequently to Malmaison. Everything that could be done was done, but poor Josephine’s power of resistance was at an end. Restlessly tossing hour after hour on her pillow, murmuring at intervals—“Bonaparte”—“Elba”—“Marie Louise”—she lay for four days. On the morning of the 29th, it was evident to Hortense and Eugene, evident to Josephine herself, that she could not live long. The priest was summoned, and alone with him she confessed for the last time, while in the chapel below her children knelt and listened to the mass said for their mother. After the confession, the members of the household gathered about her bed while the sacrament was administered. A few moments after the last words of the solemn service were said, the Empress was pronounced dead.

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The news of the death of Josephine produced a profound impression in Paris. She had died of grief, they said, grief at Napoleon’s downfall. Even those who had no sympathy for her in life were moved by the tragic circumstances of her end and hastened to pay a last tribute to her memory. For three days the body of the Empress lay on a catafalque in the vestibule of the chateau at Malmaison, and in that time over 20,000 persons looked upon it.

At the funeral, which took place on June 2nd, in the little church at Reuil, near Malmaison, royal honors were accorded Josephine; though the really touching feature of the procession and service was the presence of hundreds of people—soldiers, peasants, old men, children—who came to pay the only tribute possible to them to the “good Josephine,” the “Star” of the Emperor.

The Empress still lies in the little church at Reuil, where she was laid eighty-six years ago, and her grave and the Chateau of Malmaison have remained until to-day, places of pilgrimage for those who knew and loved her in life as well as for many thousands whose hearts have been touched by the melancholy story of her life of adventure, glory, and sorrow. In June, 1815, before departing for Waterloo, Napoleon visited the chateau. Hortense, who had not been there since her mother’s death, received him. For an hour he walked in the park talking of Josephine; then he went over the chateau, looking at every room, at almost every article of furniture. At the door of the room where Josephine had died, it is told that he stopped and said to Hortense, “My daughter, I wish to go in alone.” When he came out his eyes were wet.

Scarcely more than two weeks later he returned to Malmaison. Defeated at Waterloo, he was an outcast unless France rallied to him. That the country could not do. It was thus from the home of Josephine that Napoleon went into captivity.

In 1824, Eugène and Hortense, both exiles from France since 1815, bought one of the chapels in the church at Reuil and placed in it the beautiful monument to Josephine which is to be seen there to-day. In 1831, Hortense crossed France incognito with Louis-Napoleon, and the two then, for the first time, saw the monument. From Reuil they went to Malmaison, but only to the gates. Five years before, the chateau had been sold to a Swedish banker, and the porter refused Hortense admission because she had no pass from the proprietor.

Seven years after this sad visit, Hortense was brought to Reuil to be laid beside her mother. But it was not until twelve years later, when her son, Josephine’s beloved Oui-oui, Louis-Napoleon, had become emperor, that a monument was placed in the church to her memory. With the return of the Bonapartes to power, the memory of Josephine became a cult. It was she alone of all the women who for seventy years had ruled France, Napoleon III. told his people, who had brought them happiness. Her statue was reared in Paris; her name was given to a grand avenue; Malmaison was bought, made more brilliant than ever, and thrown open to visitors. On every hand her life was extolled, her character glorified. As a result of this attempt at canonization, Josephine became for the world a pure and gentle heroine, the victim of her own unselfish devotion to the man she loved. With the passing of the Napoleonic dynasty, it has become possible to study her life dispassionately. The researches show her to have been much less of a saint than Napoleon III. wished the world to believe.

Josephine was by birth and training the victim of a vicious system. Her nature was essentially shallow, her strongest passions being for attention, gaiety, and the possession of beautiful apparel and jewels. Nothing in her early surroundings showed her that there were better things in life to pursue. None of the hard experiences of later life dimmed these passions. To gratify them she was willing to adapt herself to any society, and freely give her person to the lover who promised most. It would be unjust to judge her by the orderly standards of present-day Anglo-Saxon morality—she, an eighteenth century creole, cast almost a child into the chaotic whirl of the French Revolution. What purity or dignity could be expected of a child of her nature when her chief protectors, her father, her aunt, and her husband, were all notoriously unfaithful to the most sacred relations of life! If Josephine, when abandoned by her husband and later thrown on her own resources in a society which was honey-combed with vice, went with her world, one can only pity.

There is little doubt that if she had been faithful to Napoleon from the beginning of their married life, her future with him would have been different. The fatal disillusion he suffered in 1797 made the divorce possible for him. So long as Josephine was true, no other woman could have existed for him. Such is the strange exclusiveness in love, of a nature, brutal, sweet, and strong like Napoleon’s. It should never be forgotten, however, that when the poor little creole realized, that to keep her position she must be faithful, she never after gave offense, and that as the years went on her devotion to her husband became a cult. Nothing indeed in the history of women is more pathetic than the patience, the sweetness, with which Josephine performed all the exacting and uncongenial duties of her position as Empress.

Although Josephine possessed none of those qualities which make a heroic soul, knew nothing of true self-denial, was a coward in danger, never lost sight of personal interest, was an abject time-server, few women have been loved more sincerely by those surrounding them. There was good reason for this. No word of malice ever crossed her lips, she took no joy in seeing an enemy suffer, she never intrigued, she never flagged in kindly service. If she was incapable of heroic deeds at least her days were filled with small courtesies, kind words, generous acts. A candid survey of her life destroys the heroine, but it leaves a woman who through a stormy life kept a kindly heart towards friend and enemy and who at last attained rectitude of conduct.

And this is the most that can be said for her. It touches the woman Josephine only. As for the Empress Josephine, she is only a name. She held her throne by the accident of her marriage and never took it seriously. She never comprehended the ideas it stood for in the mind of the great tyrant who established it. The prosperity of the French people—the glory of French arms, the spread of just laws, the establishment of a stable system, all those notions for which Napoleon was struggling, meant nothing to her save as they affected the tenure of her own position. The one distinguished opportunity she had of serving the Napoleonic idea—the divorce—she accepted only when she realized that she could not escape it. That her graciousness and her kindly spirit smoothed Napoleon’s way in the difficult task of manufacturing a court and a nobility is unquestionable. But this was the service of a tactful woman of the world rendered to a husband, not of an Empress to her people. The French people indeed meant no more to her than her throne. They merely filled the background of the stage where she played her part. She was an Empress only in name, never in soul.

Autographs of Napoleon from 1785–1816[^[3]]

In the year 1785, Napoleon left the Military School at Paris, and was admitted as a Second Lieutenant in the regiment of La Fère. At this time he signed like his father: “Buonaparte, younger son, gentleman, at the Royal Military School of Paris.”

Napoleon obtained a company in 1789, and in 1792 he was sent at the head of a battalion of Volunteer Infantry, which was to take part in an expedition against Sardinia. On returning from this expedition, he commanded the artillery at the siege of Toulon. His signature then was as follows:

After the capture of Ollioules, the 3rd of December, 1793, Napoleon was made General, and in 1794 he commanded the artillery of the Army of Italy. At the commencement of the year 1795 he was ordered to join the Infantry in the Vendée, but he refused and remained in Paris, where he was attached to the Minister of War. The 5th of October of this year, he commanded under Barras, the Army of the Convention, against the Sections of Paris, and became, thanks to him, General of Division.

A little later Barras gave him the Commanding Chief of the Army of the Interior.

Up to this time Napoleon had not changed the spelling of his name. The heading of his letters read “Buonaparte, general en chef de l’armée de l’interieur,” and he signed “Buonaparte.”

The next signature is at the end of a note on the Army of Italy dated January 19, 1796, Le Général Buonaparte.

In the Memorial from St. Helena, Napoleon says that in his youth he signed Buonaparte like his father, and having obtained the command of the Army of Italy, he changed this spelling, which was Italian, but some years later, being among the French, he signed Bonaparte.

Napoleon was made General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy, the 23rd of Feb., 1796, and he signed Buonaparte up to the 29th of the same month. He left Paris to join the Army towards the middle of the following month, and in the first letter he addressed to the Directory, dated Nice, the 28th of March, from his headquarters, he informed them that he had taken command of the Army the day before, and he signed himself Bonaparte.

From this time the change was generally adopted, and the official letters bear the signature “Bonaparte, General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy.”

From his headquarters at Carcare, Napoleon addressed to the Directory at Paris his reports on the battle of Montenotte, which opened the Italian campaign. This letter was dated April 14, 1796, and signed Bonaparte.

In his celebrated proclamation from Milan, the 20th of March, 1796, Napoleon thus addressed his army: “Soldiers, you have precipitated yourselves like a torrent from the top of the Apennines, Milan is yours!” and he signed Bonaparte.

As General-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expedition, Napoleon signed as follows:

From Cairo, the 30th of July, 1798, he signed himself Bonaparte.

When he first became Emperor, he signed himself Napoleon.

The above is one of the first signatures of the Emperor. It was given at Saint Cloud, the 25th of May, 1804. The first three letters NAPoleon, and exactly like this in the middle of his signature when he was accustomed to signing himself BuoNAParte. Up to 1805 he continued to sign his whole name. The 18th of September, 1805, he signed:

After the battle of Austerlitz, which ended the campaign of 1805, the proclamation of Napoleon, dated from the Imperial Camp of Austerlitz, the 3rd of December, 1805, was signed Napoleon.

Beginning with the campaign of 1806, he signed only the first five letters of his name, thus, Napol.

The 26th of October, 1806, at Potsdam, the Emperor signed himself thus,

The 29th of October, 1806, from Berlin, as follows:

The 27th of January, from Varsovia,

From the Imperial Camp at Tilsit, the 22nd of June, 1807, the Emperor signed only his initial, as below, and very rarely after that his entire name: N.

The 7th of December, 1808, he signed from Madrid, thus, N.

At the commencement of the campaign of 1809, in writing to Marshall Masséna, he signed himself as follows:

From the Imperial Camp of Ratisbonne, the 24th of April, 1809, the Emperor addressed a proclamation to the Army, ending thus, “Before a month has passed, I shall be at Vienna,” and he signed

Less than three weeks afterwards, the French Army was at Vienna, and the Emperor signed his decrees from the Palace of Schoenbrunn, 13th of May:

The same variety of signatures is found in the orders dated Moscow, the city which he had entered as a Conqueror, the 12th of September, 1812.

The 21st of Sept., 1812, at 3 o’clock in the morning, the Emperor signed himself as follows:

During the campaign of 1813, the Emperor sent an order from Dresden to the Major-General, dated October 1st, at noon. General Petit relates that he reflected some time before sending it, for the signature had been scratched out twice, and written a third time.

One of the next extraordinary signatures of the Emperor’s, is the following, which he gave at Erfurt, October 13, 1813:

The 4th of April, 1814, Fontainebleau, thus, N.

The 9th of September, 1814, from the Isle of Elba, he writes thus: Nap.

On July 14, 1815, the Emperor wrote to the Prince Regent of England and signed himself

At Longwood, St. Helena, on Dec. 11, 1816, the Emperor wrote to Count Las Cases a letter of condolence on the order the Count had received to leave the island. It was his first signature at St. Helena.

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[3]. This collection of signatures is reproduced from “Napoléon raconté par l’Image” by Armand Dayot.