Napoleon had to spare this jealous disposition of his young wife, for Maria Louisa was now in that situation which France and its emperor had expected and hoped from this marriage; she was approaching the time when the object for which Napoleon had married her was to be accomplished, when she was to give to France and the Bonaparte dynasty a legitimate heir. It was necessary, therefore, to be cautious with the young empress, and, on account of her interesting situation, it was expedient to avoid the gloomy sulkiness of jealousy.
By the emperor’s orders, and under pain of the punishment of his wrath, no one dared speak to Maria Louisa of the divorced empress, and Napoleon avoided designedly to give her an occasion of complaint. He went no longer to Malmaison; he even ceased corresponding with his former wife.
Only once during this period he had not been able to resist the longing of visiting Josephine, who, as he had heard, was sick. The emperor, accompanied only by one horseman, rode from Trianon to Malmaison. At the back gate of the garden he dismounted from his horse, and, without being announced, walked through the park to the castle. No one had seen him, and he was about passing from the front-room into the cabinet of the empress by a side-door, when the folding-doors leading from this front-room into the cabinet opened, and Spontini walked out.
Napoleon, agitated and vexed at having been surprised, advanced with imperious mien toward the renowned maestro, who was quietly approaching him.
“What are you doing here, sir?” cried Napoleon, with choleric impatience.
Spontini, however, returned the emperor’s haughty look, and, measuring him with a deep, flaming glance, asked, With a lofty assurance: “Sire, what are you doing here?”
The emperor answered not—a terrible glance fell upon the bold maestro, without, however, annihilating him: then Napoleon entered into Josephine’s cabinet, and Spontini walked away slowly and with uplifted head.
Spontini, the famous composer of the “Vestals,” whose score he had dedicated to the Empress Josephine, remained after her divorce a true and devoted admirer of the empress; and in Malmaison, as well as in the castle of Navarra, he showed himself as faithful, as ready to serve, as submissive, as he had once been in the Tuileries, or at St. Cloud, in the days of Josephine’s glory. He often passed whole weeks in Navarra, and even undertook to teach the ladies and gentlemen of the court the choruses of the “Vestals,” which the empress so much liked.
Josephine had, therefore, for the renowned maestro a heart-felt friendship, and she took pleasure in boasting of the gratitude and loyalty of Spontini, in contrast with the sad experiences she had made of man’s ingratitude. [Footnote: Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine,” par Mlle. Ducrest,” vol. i., p. 287.]
The emperor, as already said, avoided to trouble his young wife by exciting her jealousy; and though he did not visit Malmaison, though for a time he did not write to Josephine, yet he was acquainted with the most minute details of her life, and with all the little events of her home; and he took care that around her every thing was done according to the strictest rules of etiquette, and that she was surrounded by the same splendor and the same ceremonies as when she was empress.