EUGENE BEAUHARNAIS CLAIMING HIS FATHER’S SWORD.
London: Published for Henry Colburn, February, 1836.
“During the reign of terror,” said the Emperor, “Josephine was thrown into prison, while her husband perished on the scaffold. Her son Eugène was bound apprentice to a joiner, which trade he actually learned. Hortense had no better prospects. She was, if I mistake not, sent to learn the business of a sempstress.”[[14]]
Fouché was the first who ventured to touch the fatal string of the Imperial divorce. He took upon himself, without any instructions, to advise Josephine to dissolve her marriage for the welfare of France. Napoleon, however, conceived that the proper moment had not yet arrived. The step taken by Fouché was a source of great vexation and trouble: it very much displeased the Emperor, and if, at the earnest solicitation of Josephine, he did not dismiss Fouché, it was because he had himself secretly determined on the divorce, and he did not wish, by thus punishing his minister, to give any check to public opinion on the subject.
However, it is but justice to observe that, as soon as the Emperor shewed himself resolved on the divorce, Josephine consented to it. It cost her, it is true, a severe sacrifice: but she submitted without murmuring, and without attempting to avail herself of those obstacles which she might, however uselessly, have opposed to the measure.[[15]] She conducted herself with the utmost grace and address. She desired that the Viceroy might be put at the head of this affair, and she herself made offers of service to the house of Austria.
Josephine would willingly have seen Maria Louisa. She frequently spoke of her with great interest, as well as of the young King of Rome. Maria Louisa, on her part, behaved wonderfully well to Eugène and Hortense; but she manifested the utmost dislike and even jealousy of Josephine. “I wished one day to take her to Malmaison,” said the Emperor; “but she burst into tears when I made the proposal. She said she did not object to my visiting Josephine, only she did not wish to know it. But whenever she suspected my intention of going to Malmaison, there was no stratagem which she did not employ for the sake of annoying me. She never left me; and, as these visits seemed to vex her exceedingly, I did violence to my own feelings and scarcely ever went to Malmaison. Still, however, when I did happen to go, I was sure to encounter a flood of tears and a multitude of contrivances of every kind. Josephine always kept in view the example of the wife of Henry IV., who, as she observed, lived in Paris, visited the Court, and attended the coronation after her divorce. But she remarked that her own situation was still preferable, for she already had children of her own, and could not hope to have more.”
Josephine possessed a perfect knowledge of all the different shades of the Emperor’s character, and she evinced the most exquisite tact in turning this knowledge to the best account. “For example,” said the Emperor, “she never solicited any favour for Eugène, or thanked me for any that I conferred on him. She never even shewed any additional complaisance or assiduity, at the moment when the greatest honours were lavished on him. Her grand aim was to prove that all this was my affair, and not hers, and that it tended to my advantage. Doubtless she entertained the idea that one day or other I should adopt Eugène as my successor.”
The Emperor said he was well convinced that he was the individual whom Josephine loved best in all the world: and he added, with a smile, that he was sure she would have relinquished any assignation to attend him. She never failed to accompany him on all his journeys. Neither fatigue nor privation could daunt her; and she employed importunity and even artifice to gain her point. "If I stepped into my carriage at midnight, to set out on the longest journey, to my surprise I found Josephine all ready prepared, though I had had no idea of her accompanying me. ‘But,’ I would say to her, ‘You cannot possibly go, the journey is too long and will be too fatiguing for you.’—‘Not at all,’ Josephine would reply. ‘Besides, I must set out instantly.’—‘Well, I am quite ready.’—‘But you must take a great deal of luggage.’—‘Oh, no! every thing is packed up;‘ and I was generally obliged to yield. In a word, Josephine rendered her husband happy, and constantly proved herself his sincerest friend. At all times and on all occasions, she manifested the most perfect submission and attachment; and thus I shall never cease to remember her with tenderness and gratitude.
“Josephine,” continued the Emperor, “placed the qualities of submission, obedience, and complaisance in her sex on a level with political address; and she often condemned the conduct of her daughter Hortense and her relation Stephanie, who lived on very bad terms with their husbands, frequently indulging in caprice, and pretending to assert their independence.
“Louis,” said the Emperor, “had been spoiled by reading the works of Rousseau. He contrived to agree with his wife only for a few months. There were faults on both sides. On the one hand, Louis was too teazing in his temper, and on the other Hortense was too volatile. They were attached to each other at the time of their marriage, which was agreeable to their mutual wishes. The union was, however, contrived by Josephine, who had her own views in promoting it. I, on the contrary, would rather have extended my connection with other families, and for a moment I had an idea of forming a union between Louis and a niece of M. de Talleyrand’s, who was afterwards Madame Juste de Noailles.”
The most ridiculous reports were circulated respecting an improper intercourse between Napoleon and Hortense, and it was even affirmed that the latter had had a child by the Emperor. “Such a connection,” said he, "would have been wholly repugnant to my ideas; and those who knew anything of the morality of the Tuileries must be aware that I need not have been reduced to so unnatural and revolting a choice. Louis knew perfectly well the value to which these reports were entitled; but his vanity and irritability of temper were nevertheless offended by them, and he frequently alluded to them as a ground for reproaching his wife.