About three o’clock the Emperor received in the garden the English gentlemen who had come from Java. He afterwards took a drive in the calash.
On his return, about six o’clock, he desired me to follow him to his study. He sent for the Grand Marshal and his Lady, and conversed familiarly, until dinner time, on various subjects relating to his family and his minutest domestic affairs during the period of his power. He dwelt particularly on the Empress Josephine. “They lived together,” he said, “like a private citizen and his wife. They were most affectionate and united, having for a long period occupied but one chamber and one bed. These are circumstances,” said the Emperor, “which exercise great influence over the happiness of a family, securing the reputation of the wife and the confidence of the husband, and preserving union and good conduct on both sides. A married couple,” continued he, “may be said never to lose sight of one another, when they pass the night together; otherwise they soon become estranged. Thus, as long as this practice was continued, none of my thoughts or actions escaped the notice of Josephine. She observed, seized, and comprehended every thing. This circumstance was sometimes not altogether without its inconvenience to myself and to public affairs: but, while we were at the camp of Boulogne, a moment of ill-humour put an end to this state of things.” Certain political events which had occurred at Vienna, together with the report of the coalition which took place in 1805, had occupied the attention of the First Consul throughout the whole of the day, and a great part of the night. He retired to bed not in very good spirits, and he found Josephine in a violent rage at his long absence. Jealousy was the real or pretended cause of this ill-humour. Napoleon grew angry in his turn, threw off the yoke of subjection, and could never be brought to submit to it again. At the time of his second marriage, the Emperor was fearful, he said, “lest Maria Louisa might exact similar obedience, for in that case he must have yielded. It is the true right and privilege of a wife,” he observed.
“A son by Josephine,” continued the Emperor, "would have completed my happiness, not only in a political point of view, but as a source of domestic felicity.
"As a political result, it would have secured to me the possession of the throne; the French people would have been as much attached to the son of Josephine as they were to the King of Rome; and I should not have set my foot on an abyss covered with flowers. But how vain are all human calculations! Who can pretend to decide what may lead to happiness or unhappiness in this life!
"Still I cannot help believing that such a pledge of our union would have proved a source of domestic felicity; it would have put an end to the jealousy of Josephine, by which I was continually harassed, and which after all was the offspring of policy rather than of sentiment. Josephine despaired of having a child, and she in consequence looked forward with dread to the future. She was well aware that no marriage is perfect without children; and at the period of her second nuptials there was no longer any probability of her becoming a mother. In proportion as her fortunes advanced, her alarm increased. She availed herself of every resource of medicine; and sometimes almost persuaded herself that her remedies had proved successful. When, at length, she was compelled to renounce all hope, she suggested to her husband the expediency of resorting to a great political deception; and she even went so far as directly to propose the adoption of such a measure.
"Josephine possessed in an eminent degree the taste for luxury, gaiety, and extravagance, natural to Creoles. It was impossible to regulate her expenditure; she was constantly in debt; and thus there was always a grand dispute when the day of payment arrived. She was frequently known to direct her tradesmen to send in only half their accounts. Even at the Island of Elba, Josephine’s bills came pouring in upon me from all parts of Italy."
Some one who knew the Empress Josephine at Martinique communicated to the Emperor many particulars relative to her family and her youthful days. During her childhood, it was several times predicted that she would wear a crown. Another circumstance not less curious and remarkable is that the phial, containing the holy oil used at the coronation of the Kings of France, is said to have been broken by Josephine’s first husband, General Beauharnais, who, at a moment when the tide of popular favour was running against him, hoped by this act to gain reputation.[[13]]
A thousand stories have been told and written respecting the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine. The campaigns of Italy explain the circumstance that first brought about their acquaintance and their union. After Vendemiaire, Eugène, who was yet a child, presented himself to General Bonaparte, then General-in-chief of the army of the Interior, to request that his father’s sword might be restored to him. Lemarrois, one of Napoleon’s aides-de-camp, introduced the boy, who, the moment he beheld the sword, burst into tears. The General-in-chief was moved by this incident, and loaded the boy with caresses. When Eugène described the manners of the young General to his mother, she lost no time in introducing herself to him. “It is well known,” said the Emperor, "that she put faith in presentiments and prophecies. In her childhood, some fortuneteller had predicted that she would attain splendid rank, and would even ascend a throne. She moreover possessed a considerable share of art; and, after we became acquainted, she frequently assured me that her heart beat when she first heard Eugène describe me, and that she then caught a glimpse of her future greatness and the accomplishment of the prophecies respecting her fate.
“Another peculiar shade in the character of Josephine,” said the Emperor, “was her constant habit of negation. At all times, and whatever question I put to her, her first movement was negative, her first answer No; and this no,” continued the Emperor, “was not precisely a falsehood, but merely a precaution, or a defence.”—"This," observed Madame Bertrand, “is a characteristic distinction between our sex and yours.”—"But, after all, Madam," resumed the Emperor, "this distinction arises only from the difference of education. You love, and you are taught to say no; we, on the contrary, take a pride in declaring that we love, whether we really do or not. This is the whole course of the opposite conduct of the two sexes. We are not, and never can be, similar.
