The Empress, after remaining some time at Mayence, as the campaign on the banks of the Vistula was protracted, returned to Paris. In a state of great anxiety with regard to her husband, she took up her residence at St. Cloud. Under date of March, 1807, she wrote to her daughter, then queen of Holland, residing at the Hague:
Josephine to Hortense.
"I have received much pleasure in speaking of you with M. Jansens. I perceive, from what he tells me respecting Holland, that the king is very much beloved, and that you share in the general affection. This renders me happy. My health is very good at the present moment, but my heart is always sad.
"All the private letters which I have seen agree in the declaration that the Emperor exposed himself very much at the battle of Eylau. I frequently receive tidings from him, and sometimes two letters a day. This is a great consolation, but it does not replace him."
That Napoleon, in the midst of the ten thousand cares of so arduous a campaign, could have found time to write daily to Josephine, and often twice a day, is surely extraordinary. There are not many husbands, it is to be feared, who are so thoughtful of the anxieties of an absent wife.
Early in May the Empress received the portrait, of which we have spoken, of her idolized grandchild, Napoleon Charles, in his amusing military costume. She was intending to send it as a pleasing memorial to the Emperor in his distant encampment.
Death of Napoleon Charles.
Just then she received the dreadful tidings that little Napoleon Charles had been taken sick with the croup, and, after the illness of but a few hours, had died. It was the 5th of May, 1807. Josephine was in Paris; Hortense at the Hague, in Holland; Napoleon was hundreds of leagues distant in the north, with his army almost buried in snow upon the banks of the Vistula.
Anguish of Hortense.
The world perhaps has never witnessed the death of a child which has caused so much anguish. Hortense did not leave her son for a moment, as the terrible disease advanced to its termination. When he breathed his last she seemed completely stunned. Not a tear dimmed her eye. Not a word, not a moan was uttered. Like a marble statue, she sat upon the sofa where the child had died, gazing around her with a look of wild, amazed, delirious agony. With much difficulty she was taken from the room, being removed on the sofa upon which she reclined. Her anguish was so great that for some time it was feared that reason was dethroned, and that the blow would prove fatal. Her limbs were rigid, and her dry and glassy eye was riveted upon vacancy. At length, in the endeavor to bring her out from this dreadful state, the lifeless body of the child, dressed for the grave, was brought in and placed in the lap of its mother. The pent-up anguish of Hortense now found momentary relief in a flood of tears, and in loud and uncontrollable sobbings.