Interview between Napoleon and Josephine.
"I was one day painting a violet, a flower which recalled to my memory my more happy days, when one of my women ran towards me and made a sign by placing her finger upon her lips. The next moment I was overpowered—I beheld Napoleon. He threw himself with transport into the arms of his old friend. Oh, then I was convinced that he could still love me; for that man really loved me. It seemed impossible for him to cease gazing upon me, and his look was that of tender affection. At length, in a tone of deepest compassion and love, he said:
"'My dear Josephine, I have always loved you. I love you still. Do you still love me, excellent and good Josephine? Do you still love me, in spite of the relations I have again contracted, and which have separated me from you? But they have not banished you from my memory.'
"'Sire,' I replied—
"'Call me Bonaparte,' said he; 'speak to me, my beloved, with the same freedom, the same familiarity as ever.'
"Bonaparte soon disappeared, and I heard only the sound of his retiring footsteps. Oh, how quickly does every thing take place on earth. I had once more felt the pleasure of being loved."
In reference to this melancholy event, Napoleon said, at Saint Helena:
Napoleon's remarks on his divorce.
"My divorce has no parallel in history. It did not destroy the ties which united our families, and our mutual tenderness remained unchanged. Our separation was a sacrifice, demanded of us by reason, for the interests of my crown and of my dynasty. Josephine was devoted to me. She loved me tenderly. No one ever had a preference over me in her heart. I occupied the first place in it, her children the next. She was right in thus loving me; and the remembrance of her is still all-powerful in my mind. Josephine was really an amiable woman: she was so kind, so humane. She was the best woman in France.
"A son, by Josephine, would have completed my happiness, not only in a political point of view, but as a source of domestic felicity. As a political result it would have secured to me the possession of the throne. The French people would have been as much attached to the son of Josephine as they were to the King of Rome, and I should not have set my foot on an abyss covered with a bed of flowers. But how vain are all human calculations! Who can pretend to decide on what may lead to happiness or unhappiness in this life!"