JOSEPHINE, THE FIRST WIFE OF NAPOLEON.
Engraved by Audouin, after Laurent. This portrait “Joséphine impératrice des Français, reine d’Italie,” is surrounded by an elaborate frame of Imperial emblems. After the divorce, Josephine’s portrait was erased from the plate, and that of Marie Louise inserted.
The rapid recovery of fortune which followed the reverse at Essling soon reassured Josephine. She saw from Napoleon’s letters that, however his critics might feel that his star was waning, he himself had not lost courage. He scorned their exultation. “They have made an appointment to meet at my tomb,” he said, “but they’ll not dare carry it out.” His deeds verified his words. In rapid succession, he sent Josephine announcements of the series of victories which marked the latter half of June, 1809, and which culminated in Wagram on July 6th. A week later she received notice of the suspension of hostilities.
Once more the Empress breathed freely; Napoleon was safe, and he was victorious. Now his letters were longer, gayer, tenderer than they had been for many months. He rejoiced in the reports she sent him from Plombières of her gaining strength. “I am glad the waters are doing you so much good,” he wrote; and again, “I hear that you are stout, rosy, and looking very well.” He made no objection to the plans she suggested for herself. Stay at Plombières if she wished, why not; and when she is ready in August, go to Paris. If her letters are long in coming, he chides her. “I have received no letters from you for several days. The pleasures at Malmaison, the beautiful hot-houses and gardens, make you forget me. That’s the way it goes, they say.” As the time approached for his return—the negotiations at Schönbrunn which followed the war lasted into October—he began to show something like eagerness. Every day he sent a brief note of his coming return. “I’ll let you know twenty-four hours before my arrival.” “I shall make a fête of our reunion. I am waiting for the moment impatiently.” True, there was nothing of the lover in these daily bulletins (it was hardly to be expected when we remember that, during most of the campaign of 1809, Mme. de Walewski was living in a palace in Vienna, where Napoleon saw her constantly); but there was confidence, affection, interest; no sign at all of an approaching separation; and yet Napoleon undoubtedly left Schönbrunn in October persuaded that the divorce was a necessity and resolved to tell Josephine of his decision as soon as he arrived in France.
CHAPTER VIII
NAPOLEON RETURNS TO FRANCE—JOSEPHINE’S UNHAPPINESS—NAPOLEON’S VIEW OF A DIVORCE—THE WAY IN WHICH THE DIVORCE WAS EFFECTED
Unhappily for the Empress, her reunion with Napoleon was marred by a delay which irritated the Emperor no little. Josephine was at St. Cloud when she received a note, about October 24th or 25th, from Napoleon, saying he would be at Fontainebleau on the 26th or 27th, and that she had better go there with her suite. A later courier set the evening of the 27th as the time of his arrival. What was Josephine’s terror on having a messenger ride rapidly in from Fontainebleau on the afternoon of the 26th, saying the Emperor had arrived that morning and there had been no one but the concierge to meet him! It could not be denied that such a reception was a poor one for a conquering Emperor who now for the first time in six months set foot in his kingdom. Josephine feared, with reason, that Napoleon would be irritated, and now of all times when she needed so much to please him!
Post haste she drove to Fontainebleau. The Emperor did not come to meet her, and she was forced to mount to his library, where his scant welcome chilled her to the heart. He meant to announce the divorce then. She soon found, however, that it was the Emperor’s resentment at what he considered her fault in failing to meet him that caused his coldness. A trembling explanation, a few tears, and he was appeased, and they passed a happy evening.
Napoleon had taken quite another means, and a most disquieting one, to hint to Josephine that the divorce was under consideration. The apartments of the Emperor and Empress at Fontainebleau, as at other places, were connected by a private staircase. When Josephine looked about her suite, which had been newly decorated, she discovered that this passage had been sealed up. In consternation, she sought a friend of hers in Napoleon’s household, and asked why this had been done, by whose orders. She could get no satisfaction, nothing but evasive answers, halting explanations. Alarmed, yet fearing to approach the Emperor, she showed a troubled face and tear-stained eyes. Now, nothing ever had disturbed Napoleon more than to see Josephine in sorrow. The sight, and the knowledge of the cause, unnerved him now. He took a course characteristic of an autocratic man, accustomed to implicit obedience from associates, when he has determined to force some one he loves to do a distasteful act; he avoided Josephine’s presence, scarcely ever exchanged a word with her that the etiquette of the court did not require, rarely met her gaze. The Empress felt that his coldness could mean but one thing. She soon began to hear whispers of the decision in the court, for the Emperor had made his resolution known to several persons, and the necessary preparations were already making. Josephine could not but see, at the same time, that her enemies—the Bonaparte family and their allies—and those about her who were mere time-servers had changed materially in their attitude toward her. There was more than one lord or lady who did not hesitate to neglect, even slight, the Empress. She was a person whom it was no longer necessary to cultivate; and, besides, might not the Emperor take it as a compliment to his judgment to see that she whom he was to discard was ignored by his followers?
Josephine’s uncertainty as to precisely what the divorce meant made her alarm the greater. She undoubtedly saw in it at this time nothing but a disgrace and a punishment. She was to be cast out—her honors stripped from her, her friends driven away, her luxury at an end. Not only must she be separated from the Emperor, whom she loved and to whose happiness and success she believed superstitiously that she was necessary; but no doubt she would be driven from France. She saw herself in exile, poor, friendless, alone,—she who had been the Empress of France, the consort of Napoleon. And her children: her downfall meant theirs. Hortense, whose happiness had been wrecked by her marriage, what now would become of her? And Eugène, whom the Emperor had so loved and trusted and honored, what of him?
But Josephine’s idea of the divorce as a disgrace and punishment was not Napoleon’s. That he had never explained to her what he meant, was due to his own cowardice. In 1807, he had succumbed entirely, when the subject came up, and put the thought aside. Now he clung to his decision, but lacked courage to break it to her. He feigned irritation and coldness to hide his own faint-heartedness.