Thursday, December 21st, is the date.
The weather is very damp.—Making Malmaison as unhealthy as its very name warranted, and rendering more difficult the task which Madame de Rémusat had set herself of resting Josephine mentally by tiring her physically. This typical toady—Napoleon's Eavesdropper Extraordinary—had arrived at Malmaison on December 18th. She writes on the Friday (December 22nd), beseeching her husband to advise the Emperor to moderate the tone of his letters, especially this one (Thursday, December 21st), which had upset Josephine frightfully. Surely a more harmless letter was never penned. But it is the Rémusat all over; she lives in a chronic atmosphere of suspicion that all her letters are read by the Emperor, and therefore, like Stevenson's nursery rhymes, they are always written with "one eye on the grown-up person"[85]—on the grown-up person par excellence of France and the century. The opening of letters by the government was doubtless a blemish, which, however, Napoleon tried to neutralise by entrusting the Post Office to his wife's relative, Lavalette, a man whose ever-kind heart prevented this necessary espionage degenerating into unnecessary interference with individual rights.
No. 5.
Date probably Sunday, December 24th.
King of Bavaria.—Eugène had gone to Meaux to meet his father-in-law, who had put off the "dog's humour" which he had shown since the 16th.
No. 6.
Josephine had gone by special invitation to dine at the little Trianon with Napoleon on Christmas Day, and Madame d'Avrillon says she had a very happy day there. "On her return she told me how kind the Emperor had been to her, that he had kept her all the evening, saying the kindest things to her." Aubenas says, "The repast was eaten in silence and gloom," but does not give his authority. Eugène, moreover, confirms Madame d'Avrillon in his letter to his wife of December 26th: "My dear Auguste, the Emperor came on Sunday to see the Empress. Yesterday she went to Trianon to see him, and stayed to dinner. The Emperor was very kind and amiable to her, and she seemed to be much better. Everything points to the Empress being more happy in her new position, and we also." On this Christmas Day Napoleon had his last meal with Josephine.
No. 7.
Tuileries.—His return from Trianon to this, his official residence, made the divorce more apparent to every one.
No. 8.