"As soon as the reading of the act of separation was finished, Josephine, for a moment, in anguish pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and rising, in tones clear, musical, but tremulous with repressed emotion, pronounced the oath of acceptance. She sat down, took the pen, and affixed her signature to the deed which sundered the dearest hopes and the fondest ties which human hearts can feel. Eugene could endure this anguish no longer. His brain reeled, his heart ceased to beat, and fainting, he fell senseless to the floor. Josephine and Hortense retired, with the attendants who bore out the inanimate form of the affectionate son and brother. It was a fitting termination of the heart-rending yet sublime tragedy.
"Josephine remained in her chamber overwhelmed with speechless grief. A sombre night darkened over the city, oppressed by the gloom of this cruel sacrifice. The hour arrived at which Napoleon usually retired for sleep. The Emperor, restless and wretched, had just placed himself in the bed from which he had ejected his faithful and devoted wife, when the private door of his chamber was slowly opened, and Josephine tremblingly entered.
Affecting interview.
"Her eyes were swollen with weeping, her hair disordered, and she appeared in all the dishabille of unutterable anguish. Hardly conscious of what she did, in the delirium of her woe, she tottered into the middle of the room and approached the bed of her former husband. Then irresolutely stopping, she buried her face in her hands and burst into a flood of tears.
"A feeling of delicacy seemed, for a moment, to have arrested her steps—a consciousness that she had now no right to enter the chamber of Napoleon. In another moment all the pent-up love of her heart burst forth, and forgetting every thing in the fullness of her anguish, she threw herself upon the bed, clasped Napoleon's neck in her arms, and exclaiming, 'My husband! my husband!' sobbed as though her heart were breaking. The imperial spirit of Napoleon was entirely vanquished. He also wept convulsively. He assured Josephine of his love—of his ardent, undying love. In every way he tried to soothe and comfort her. For some time they remained locked in each other's embrace. The valet-de-chambre, who was still present, was dismissed, and for an hour Napoleon and Josephine continued together in this their last private interview. Josephine then, in the experience of an intensity of anguish such as few human hearts have ever known, parted forever from the husband whom she had so long and so faithfully loved."
Josephine having withdrawn, an attendant entered the apartment to remove the lights. He found the Emperor so buried beneath the bedclothes as to be invisible. Not a word was uttered. The lights were removed, and the unhappy monarch was left alone in darkness and silence to the melancholy companionship of his own thoughts. The next morning the death-like pallor of his cheek, his sunken eye, and the haggard expression of his countenance, attested that the Emperor had passed the night in sleeplessness and in suffering.
Grief of Napoleon.
The grief of Napoleon was unquestionably sincere. It could not but be so. He was influenced by no vagrant passion. He had formed no new attachment. He truly loved Josephine. He consequently resolved to retire for a time to the seclusion of Trianon, at Versailles. He seemed desirous that the externals of mourning should accompany an event so mournful.
Testimony of Baron Meneval.
"The orders for the departure for Trianon," writes the Baron Meneval, Napoleon's private secretary, "had been previously given. When in the morning the Emperor was informed that his carriages were ready, he took his hat and said, 'Meneval, come with me.' I followed him by the little winding staircase which, from his cabinet, communicated with the apartment of the Empress. Josephine was alone, and appeared absorbed in the most melancholy reflections. At the noise which we made in entering, she eagerly rose and threw herself sobbing upon the neck of the Emperor. He pressed her to his bosom with the most ardent embraces.