Letter from Josephine to Hortense.
She advises Hortense to be more kind to Louis.
"What I learned eight days ago gave me the greatest pain. What I observe to-day confirms and augments my sorrow. Why show to Louis this repugnance? Instead of rendering him more ungracious still by caprice, by inequality of character, why do you not rather make efforts to surmount your indifference? But you will say, he is not amiable! All that is relative. If not in your eyes amiable, he may appear so to others, and all women do not view him through the medium of dislike. As for myself, who am here altogether disinterested, I imagine that I behold him as he is, more loving, doubtless, than lovable, but this is a great and rare quality. He is generous, beneficent, feeling, and, above all, an excellent father. If you so willed, he would prove a good husband. His melancholy, his love of study and retirement, injure him in your estimation. For these, I ask you, is he to blame? Is he obliged to conform his nature to circumstances? Who could have predicted to him his fortune? But, according to you, he has not even the courage to bear that fortune. This, I believe, is an error; but he certainly wants the strength. With his ascetic inclinations, his invincible desire of retirement and study, he finds himself misplaced in the elevated rank to which he has attained. You desire that he should imitate his brother. Give him, first of all, the same temperament. You have not failed to remark that almost our entire existence depends upon our health, and that upon our digestion. Let poor Louis digest better, and you would find him more amiable. But, such as he is, there can be no reason for abandoning him, or making him feel the unbecoming sentiments with which he inspires you. Do you, whom I have seen so kind, continue to be so at the moment when it is precisely more than ever necessary. Take pity on a man who has to lament that he possesses what would constitute another's happiness; and, before condemning him, think of others who, like him, have groaned beneath the burden of their greatness, and bathed with their tears that diadem which they believed had never been destined for their brow."
Unhappy disposition of Louis.
Errors of Hortense.
Happiness to which she might have attained.
The spirit of Josephine.
This, surely, was admirable counsel, and, had Hortense followed it, she would have saved herself many a long year of loneliness and anguish. But the impetuous and thoughtless bride could not repress the repugnance with which she regarded the cold exterior and the exacting love of her husband. Louis demanded from her a singleness and devotedness of affection which was unreasonable. He wished to engross all her faculties of loving. He desired that every passion of her soul should be centered in him, and was jealous of any happiness she found excepting that which he could give. He was even troubled by the tender regard with which she cherished her mother and her brother, considering all the love she gave to them as so much withheld from him. Hortense was passionately fond of music and of painting. Louis almost forbade her the enjoyment of those delightful accomplishments, thinking that she pursued them with a heartfelt devotion inconsistent with that supreme love with which she ought to regard her husband. Hortense, proud and high-spirited, would not submit to such tyranny. She resisted and retaliated. She became, consequently, wretched, and her husband wretched, and discord withered all the joys of home. At last, the union of such discordant spirits became utterly insupportable. They separated. The story of their domestic quarrels vibrated upon the ear of Europe. Louis wandered here and there, joyless and sad, till, weary of a miserable life, alone and friendless, he died. Hortense retired, with a restless and suffering heart, to the mountains of Switzerland, where, in a secluded castle, she lingered out the remaining years of her sorrowful pilgrimage. It was an unfortunate match. Having been made, the only possible remedy was in pursuing the course which Josephine so earnestly recommended. Had Josephine been married to Louis, she would have followed the course she counseled her daughter to pursue. She would have leaned fondly upon his arm in his morning and evening walks. She would have cultivated a lively interest in his reading, his studies, and all his quiet domestic pleasures. She would, as far as possible, have relinquished every pursuit which could by any possibility have caused him pain. Thus she would have won his love and his admiration. Every day her power over him would have been increasing. Gradually her influence would have molded his character to a better model. He would have become proud of his wife. He would have leaned upon her arm. He would have been supported by her affection and her intellectual strength. He would have become more cheerful in character and resolute in purpose. Days of tranquillity and happiness would have embellished their dwelling. The spirit of Josephine! It is noble as well as lovely. It accomplishes the most exalted achievements, and diffuses the most ennobling happiness. There are thousands of unions as uncongenial as that of Hortense and Louis. From the woes such unions would naturally engender there is but one refuge, and Josephine has most beautifully shown what that refuge is. Hortense, proud and high-spirited, resolved that she would not submit to the exacting demands of her husband. In her sad fate we read the warning not to imitate her example.
Character of Hortense.
Hortense is invariably described as an unusually fascinating woman. She had great vivacity of mind, and displayed much brilliance of conversational powers. Her person was finely formed, and she inherited much of that graceful demeanor which so signally characterized her mother. She was naturally amiable, and was richly endowed with all those accomplishments which enable one to excel in the art of pleasing. Louis, more than any other of the brothers, most strongly resembled Napoleon. He was a very handsome man, and possessed far more than ordinary abilities. Under less untoward circumstances he might have been eminently happy. Few persons, however, have journeyed along the path of life under a darker cloud than that which ever shed its gloom upon the footsteps of Louis and Hortense.
Calumnies against Napoleon.
They fail in their effect.
Among the various attempts which had been made to produce alienation between Napoleon and Josephine, one of the most atrocious was the whispered insinuation that the strong affection which the first consul manifested for Hortense was a guilty passion. Napoleon exhibited in the most amiable manner his qualities as a father, in the frequent correspondence he carried on with the two children of Josephine, in the interest he took in their studies, and in the solicitude he manifested to promote their best welfare. He loved Hortense as if she had been his own child. Josephine was entirely impregnable against any jealousy to be introduced from that quarter, and a peaceful smile was her only reply to all such insinuations. Hortense had also heard, and had utterly disregarded, these rumors. The marriage of Hortense to a brother of Napoleon had entirely silenced the calumny, and it was soon forgotten.
Unjust remarks of Hortense.
Subsequently, when Hortense had become entirely alienated from her husband, and was resolved upon a separation, Josephine did every thing in her power to dissuade her from an act so rash, so disgraceful, so ruinous to her happiness. She wrote to her in terms of the most earnest entreaty. The self-willed queen, annoyed by these remonstrances, and unable to reply to them, ventured to intimate to her mother that perhaps she was not entirely disinterested in her opposition. In most guarded terms she suggested that her mother had heard the groundless accusation of Napoleon's undue fondness, and that it was possible that her strong opposition to the separation of Hortense from her husband might originate in the fear that Hortense might become, in some degree, her rival in the affections of Napoleon. Josephine very promptly and energetically replied,