Josephine was too good and great for the wife of such a man. She saw through him. She understood him, and only honest men are willing to be understood. He was tired of her, for she no longer ministered to his vanity. He had captured her, and now he was done with her. Besides that, she sided with the peace party, and this was intolerable. Still he did not beat her with a stick; he treated her most graciously, and installing her at beautiful Malmaison, provided her everything to make her happy. And if "things" could make one happy, she would have been.
And as for the Egyptian campaign, it surely was a picnic party, or it was until things got so serious that frolic was supplanted by fear. You can't frolic with your hair on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. Napoleon did not write to his wife. He frolicked. Occasionally his secretary sent her a formal letter of instruction, and when she at last wrote him asking an explanation for such strange silence, the Little Man answered her with accusations of infidelity.
Josephine decided to secure a divorce, and there is pretty good proof that papers were prepared; and had the affair been carried along, the courts would have at once allowed the separation on statutory grounds. However, the papers were destroyed, and Josephine decided to live it out. But Napoleon had heard of these proposed divorce proceedings and was furious. When he came back, it was with the intention of immediate legal separation—in any event separation.
He came back and held out haughtily for three days, addressing her as "Madame," and refusing so much as to shake hands. After the three days he sued for peace and cried it out on his knees with his head in her lap. It was not genuine humility, only the humility that follows debauch. Napoleon had many kind impulses, but his mood was selfish indifference to the rights or wishes of others. He did not hold hate, yet the thought of divorce from Josephine was palliated in his own mind by the thought that she had first suggested it. "I took her at her word," he once said to Bertram, as if the thing were pricking him.
And so matters moved on. There was war, and rumors of war, alway; but the vanquished paid the expenses. It was thought best that France should be ruled by three consuls. Three men were elected, with Napoleon as First Consul. The First Consul bought off the Second and Third Consuls and replaced them with two wooden men from the Tenth Ward.
Josephine worked for the glory of France and for her husband: she was diplomat and adviser. She placated enemies and made friends.
France prospered, and in the wars the foreigner usually not only paid the bills, but a goodly tribute beside. Nothing is so good as war to make peace at home. An insurrectionist at home makes a splendid soldier abroad. Napoleon's battles were won by the "dangerous class." As the First Consul was Emperor in fact, the wires were pulled, and he was made so in name. His wife was made Empress: it must be so, as a breath of disapproval might ruin the whole scheme. Josephine was beloved by the people, and the people must know that she was honored by her husband. With a woman's intuition, Josephine saw the end—power grows until it topples. She pleaded, begged—it was of no avail—the tide swept her with it, but whither, whither? she kept asking.
Meantime Hortense had been married to Louis, brother of Napoleon. In due time Napoleon found himself a grandfather. He both liked it and didn't. He considered himself a youth and took a pride in being occasionally mistaken for a recruit, and here some newspaper had called him "granddaddy," and people had laughed! He was not even a father, except by law—not Nature—and that's no father at all, for Nature does not recognize law. He joked with Josephine about it, and she turned pale.
There is no subject on which men so deceive themselves as concerning their motives for doing certain things. On no subject do mortals so deceive themselves as their motives for marriage. Their acts may be all right, but the reasons they give for doing them never are. Napoleon desired a new wife, because he wished a son to found a dynasty.