Josephine might have imagined that nothing had been altered in her situation, and that she was still Napoleon’s wife. But there were wanting in their intercourse those little, inexpressible shades of confidence which her exquisite tact and her instinctive feelings felt yet more deeply than the more important and visible changes.
When Napoleon came or went, he no longer embraced her, but merely pressed her hand in a friendly manner, and often called her “madame” and “you;” he was more formal, more polite to her than he had ever been before.
And then his daily visits ceased; in their place came his letters, it is true, but they were only the letters of a friend, who tried to comfort her in her misfortune, but took no sympathetic interest in her distress.
Soon these letters became more rare, and when they did come they were shorter. The emperor had to busy himself with other matters than with the solitary, rejected woman in Malmaison; he had now to occupy his thoughts with his young and beautiful bride—with Maria Louisa, the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, who was soon to enter Paris as the wife of Napoleon, the Emperor of France.
Bitter and painful indeed were those first days of resignation for Josephine; harsh and unsparing were the conflicts she had to fight with her own heart, before its wounds could be closed, and its pains and its humiliations cease to torment her!
But Josephine had a brave heart, a strong will, and a resolute determination to control herself. She conquered herself into rest and resignation; she did not wish that the emperor, the happy bridegroom, should ever hear of her red, weeping eyes, of her lamentations and sighs; she did not wish that, in the golden cup which the husband of the emperor’s young daughter was drinking in the full joyousness of a conqueror, her tears should commingle therein as drops of gall.
She controlled herself so far as to be able with smiling calmness to have related to her how Paris was celebrating the new marriage festivities, how the new Empress of the French was everywhere received with enthusiasm. She was even able to inquire, with an expression of friendly sympathy, after Maria Louisa, the young wife of sixteen, who had taken the place of the woman of forty-eight, and from whom Josephine, in the sincerity of her love, required but one thing, namely, to make Napoleon happy.
When she was told that Napoleon loved Maria Louisa with all the passion of a fiery lover, Josephine conquered herself so as to smile and thank God that she had accepted her sacrifice and thus secured Napoleon’s happiness.
But the emperor, however much he might be enamored of his young wife, never forgot the bride of the past, the beloved one of his youth, of whom he had been not only captivated, but whom he had loved from the very depths of his soul. He surrounded her, though from a distance, with attentions and tokens of affection; he would often write to her; and at times, when his heart was burdened and full of cares, he would come to Malmaison, and visit this woman who understood how to read in his face the thoughts of his heart, this woman whose soft, gracious, and amiable disposition—even as a tranquillizing and invigorating breeze after a sultry day—could quiet his excited soul; to this woman he came for refreshment, for a little repose, and sweet communion.
It is true those visits of the emperor to his divorced wife were made secretly and privately, for his second wife was jealous of the affection which Napoleon still retained for Josephine; she listened with gloomy attention to the descriptions which were made to her of the amiableness, of the unwithered beauty of Josephine; and one day, after hearing that the emperor had visited her in Malmaison, Maria Louisa broke out into tears, and complained bitterly of this mortification caused by her husband.