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.