Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

When with very great trouble one had succeeded in satisfying him, it is not to be supposed that he would testify that satisfaction. Silence was the best one had to expect. He would go to the play preoccupied, irritated by reading some English journal, or, perhaps, only fatigued with the day’s hunting, and he would either fall into reverie or go to sleep. No applause was permitted in his presence, and the silent representation was exceedingly dull and cold. The Court grew intolerably weary of these eternal tragedies. The younger ladies simply slept through them; every one went away depressed and dissatisfied. The Emperor perceived this, was angry at it, attacked his First Chamberlain, blamed the actors, insisted on others being found, although he had the best, and would command different pieces for the ensuing days, which were received in precisely the same manner. It rarely happened otherwise, and our theatrical experiences were, it must be confessed, eminently unpleasant. Those days at Fontainebleau were a constantly recurring source of misery to me; the frivolity of the thing itself, and the importance of its consequences, rendered it a great trial.

The Emperor admired Talma’s acting; he persuaded himself that he liked it very much, but I think he rather knew than felt that Talma was a great actor. He had not in himself that which enables one to take pleasure in the representation of a fiction on the stage; he was deficient in education, and his mind was too rarely disengaged, he was too entirely occupied by his own actual circumstances, to be able to give his attention to the development of a feigned passion. He occasionally appeared moved by a scene, or even by a word pronounced with great effect; but that emotion detracted from his pleasure as a whole, because he wanted it to be prolonged in all its strength, and he never took those secondary impressions into account, which are produced by the beauty of the verse or the harmony which a great actor lends to his entire rôle. In general, he thought our French drama cold, our actors too measured, and he resented to others that he found it impossible to be pleased with what the multitude accepted as a diversion.

It was the same with regard to music. He had little feeling for the arts, but he had an intellectual appreciation of them, and, demanding from them more than they could give him, he complained of not having felt what his nature did not permit him to experience.

The first singers in Italy had been attracted to the Emperor’s Court. He paid them largely; his vanity was gratified by the power of taking them away from other sovereigns; but he listened to their strains moodily, and seldom with any interest. M. de Rémusat bethought himself of enlivening the concerts by a sort of representation of the pieces of music that were executed in the Emperor’s presence. These concerts were sometimes given on the stage, and they included the finest scenes from the Italian operas. The singers wore the appropriate costumes, and really acted; the decorations represented the scene in which the action of the song was supposed to pass. All this was arranged and mounted with the greatest care, but, like everything else, failed in its effect. And yet not completely; for it must be said that, if so much attention and pains were labor lost so far as his pleasure was concerned, the pomp of all these various spectacles and entertainments pleased Bonaparte, for it consorted with his policy, and he liked to display a superiority which extended to everything before the crowd of foreigners who surrounded him.

The same moody and discontented temper, which was inseparable from him, cast a cloud over the balls and receptions at Fontainebleau. At eight o’clock in the evening, the Court, all in splendid attire, would assemble in the apartment of the Princess whose turn it was to receive company. We placed ourselves in a circle, and looked at each other without speaking. Thus we awaited the arrival of their Majesties. The Empress came in first, made the tour of the reception-room with her unfailing grace, and then took her place and kept silence like the rest, until the Emperor at length appeared. He would seat himself by her side, and look on at the dancing with a countenance so little encouraging to gayety, that enjoyment was out of the question on these occasions. Sometimes, during a pause in the dancing, he would walk about the room, addressing some trifling remarks to the ladies. These observations were, for the most part, jests about their attire, of anything but a delicate kind. He withdrew very soon, and shortly afterward the party would break up.

During the sojourn of the Court at Fontainebleau, a very pretty woman made her appearance, and attracted the attention of the Emperor. She was an Italian. . . . M. de Talleyrand had seen her in Italy, and persuaded the Emperor to appoint her “Reader” to the Empress. Her husband was made Receiver-General. The Empress was at first indignant at the appearance of this fair lady on the scenes; but she promptly made up her mind to lend herself with complacency to what she was powerless to oppose, and this time she shut her eyes to the state of affairs. The lady was a quiet person, acquiescent rather than elated; she yielded to her master from a sort of conviction that she ought not to resist him. But she made no display, she gave herself no airs in consequence of her success, and she contrived to combine a real attachment to Mme. Bonaparte with submission to Bonaparte’s fancy for her. The result was that the affair was conducted without any scandal or disturbance. This lady was certainly the handsomest woman in the Court, which boasted a number of beauties. I have never seen more beautiful eyes, finer features, or a more exquisitely harmonious face. She was tall, and had an elegant figure, but she was a little too slight. The Emperor never cared very much for her; he told his wife all about the affair at once, and made her mind quite easy by his unreserved confidence respecting this brief and unsentimental liaison. The lady was lodged in the palace of Fontainebleau in such a manner as to be within call whenever he desired her presence. It was whispered about that she came down in the evening to his apartment, or he went to hers; but in the ordinary circle he did not talk to her more than to any other lady, and the Court paid no great attention to this affair, because it was plainly unlikely to lead to any change. M. de Talleyrand, who had in the first instance persuaded Bonaparte to select this Italian as a mistress, received his confidences concerning her, and that was all.

If I were asked whether the idleness of our Court life at Fontainebleau led to the formation of liaisons of a similar kind on the part of the courtiers, I should hardly know how to answer that question. The Emperor’s service demanded such entire subjection, and involved such close though trifling occupation, that the men had not time for gallantry, and the women were too much afraid of what Bonaparte might say of them to yield without very great precaution. In so cold, constrained, and conventional a society, in which no one would venture on a word or a movement more than the others, no coquetry was ever displayed, and every arrangement was made in silence, and with a promptitude which eluded observation. Another peculiarity of the time which acted as a safeguard to women was that men took no pains to please: they merely asserted the pretensions of victory without wasting time in the preliminaries of love. Thus, among the Emperor’s surroundings, only passing intrigues, whose dénoûment both parties seemed anxious to hasten as much as possible, took place. Besides, Bonaparte desired that his Court should be grave, and he would not have permitted women to assume the slightest ascendency in it. To himself alone he reserved the right to every kind of liberty. He tolerated the misconduct of certain members of his own family, because he knew that he was powerless to restrain them, and that the attempt to do so only gave the facts additional publicity. For the same reason, he would have dissembled the anger he might have felt had his wife allowed herself any “distractions”; but at this period she no longer seemed disposed to do so. I am absolutely unacquainted with the secrets of her private life, and I always saw her exclusively occupied with the difficulties of her own position, and tremblingly apprehensive of displeasing her husband. She was entirely devoid of coquetry; her manner was perfectly modest and reserved; she never spoke to men, except to find out what was going on; and her grand subject of care and dread was the divorce which was always hanging over her head. Lastly, the women of that Court had great need to be on their guard and to take care what they did; for, whenever the Emperor was informed of anything—and he always was informed—he would invariably make the husband acquainted with the facts of the case. It is true that he interdicted any complaint or action in consequence. Thus, we all know that he has made S—— aware of certain adventures of his wife’s, and so imperiously ordered him to display no anger that S——, who was always entirely submissive to him, consented to allow himself to be deceived, and ended, partly through this weak compliance, and partly through his desire to think his wife innocent, by not believing facts which were of public notoriety.

Mme. de X—— was at Fontainebleau, but the Emperor never paid her any attention; and, if the rumor that the former liaison between them was temporarily renewed had any truth at all in it, the revived intimacy must have been very transitory, and it did not restore any of her vanished importance to the lady.

We had, however, during our stay at Fontainebleau, the spectacle of one really ardent love-affair. Jérôme, as I have already said, had recently married the Princess Catherine, and his young wife became deeply attached to him, but very shortly after their marriage he gave her cause for jealousy. The young Princess of Baden was at this time a very fascinating person, and on very bad terms with her husband. She was coquettish, frivolous, gay, and clever, and she had a great success in society. Jérôme fell in love with her, and his passion seemed to afford her considerable amusement. She danced with him at all the balls. The Princess Catherine, who was even then too fat, did not dance, and she would remain seated, sadly contemplating the gayety of the two young people, who passed and repassed before her, quite indifferent to the pain they were inflicting on her. At length, one evening, in the midst of a fête, the good understanding between them being too plain to be mistaken, the young Queen of Westphalia was observed to turn deadly pale, and burst into tears; in another minute she had slid from her chair and swooned completely away. The ball was interrupted; she was carried into another room, the Empress and some of the ladies hastened to her aid, and we heard the Emperor address a severe rebuke to his brother, after which he retired. Jérôme, greatly frightened, went at once to his wife, took her upon his knee, and endeavored to restore her to consciousness by his caresses. The Princess, on coming to herself, wept bitterly, and seemed to be unaware that a number of persons surrounded her. I looked on at this scene in silence, deeply impressed by its strangeness, by the sight of this Jérôme—whom a succession of circumstances, all entirely independent of any merit of his own, had raised to a throne—figuring as the object of the passionate love of a real Princess, with the right to her love, and also a right to neglect her. I can not describe what I felt at seeing her sitting upon his knees, her head upon his shoulder, and receiving his kisses, while he called her by her name, “Catherine,” over and over again, entreating her to calm herself, and using the familiar tutoiement. A few minutes later the young couple retired to their own apartment.

On the following day Bonaparte ordered his wife to speak strongly to her young niece, and I also was instructed to make her listen to reason. She received me very well, and listened to me with attention. I represented to her that she was compromising her future, and urged upon her that her duty and her interest alike bound her to live on proper terms with the Prince of Baden; that she was destined to live in other countries than France; that levity which might be tolerated in Paris would probably be resented in Germany; and that she ought most carefully to avoid giving any excuse for the spread of calumny against her. She acknowledged that she had more than once reproached herself for the imprudence of her behavior, but that there really was nothing in it except the desire to amuse herself; and she added that she was quite aware that all her present importance was due to her being Princess of Baden, for she was no longer treated at the French Court as she had been in times past. This was, in fact, quite true; for the Emperor, who had outlived his fancy for her, had changed the whole ceremonial with respect to her, and, paying no attention to the rules which he had himself laid down at the time of her marriage, no longer treated her as his adopted daughter, but accorded her merely the precedence of a Princess of the Confederation of the Rhine, which came very far after that of the Queens and Princesses of the Imperial family. Lastly, she knew that she was a cause of disturbance, and the young Prince, who did not venture to express his displeasure, manifested it only by his extreme dejection. Our conversation lasted for a long time, and she was much impressed by it and by her own reflections. When she dismissed me, it was with an embrace, and saying, “You shall see that you will be pleased with me.”