When Joseph Bonaparte became king of Naples, his sister Caroline, then Grand Duchess of Berg, avoided as much as possible her modest sister-in-law, the queen of Naples. But finding herself obliged to give her the title of “Your Majesty,” she dared at length to complain to Napoleon that he had not yet given her a crown. Napoleon replied: “Your complaint astonishes me, madame! To hear you, one might suppose I had deprived you of your right of succession to the throne of your ancestor.”
No one of Napoleon’s evil advisers was more crafty, insidious, and unscrupulous than Fouché. Like a Mephistopheles, with sardonic smile he held his fingers on the keys which played the tune of politics. Through his minions, the police, he entered even the closed doors of his Majesty’s cabinet, and caught the rumors which dropped in idle gossip from the rosy lips of the beauties of the court.
After his cool affront to Josephine, in endeavoring to persuade her that she should herself suggest to Napoleon the divorce, she begged the emperor to remove Fouché from his office of minister of police; but Bonaparte, with strange blindness, kept the wily serpent near him, and banished from his presence his own guardian angel. And when at last he had been stung himself by the treacherous fangs of the insidious viper, and Napoleon became at length convinced that Fouché was maintaining a correspondence with England, through his spies, the emperor dismissed him; but it was too late.
The same Fouché who had thrust the dagger into the heart of Josephine, afterwards proved to be one of the chief instigators of the plots which caused the second abdication of Napoleon. Bourrienne thus pithily describes him:—
“Fouché had opinions, but he belonged to no party; and his political success is explained by the readiness with which he always served the party he knew must triumph, and which he himself overthrew in its turn. He maintained himself in favor, from the days of blood and terror until the time of the second restoration, only by abandoning and sacrificing those who were attached to him. In all things he looked only to himself; and to this egotism he sacrificed both subjects and governments.
“Such were the secret causes of the sway exercised by Fouché during the Convention, the Directory, the Empire, and after the return of the Bourbons. He helped to found and to destroy every one of these successive governments.”
Napoleon afterwards realized some of the treachery of this archtraitor, and thus spoke of him at St. Helena:—
“Fouché is a miscreant of all colors;—a priest, a Terrorist, and one who took an active part in many bloody scenes of the Revolution. He is a man who can worm all your secrets out of you with an air of calmness and of unconcern.”
What wonder that poor unsuspicious Josephine was betrayed by such a Judas!
This smiling Mephistopheles might thus have counselled with his crafty soul:—