At length came the day of days for them both, the dismal evening upon which Napoleon had resolved to speak. He was gloomy and sad; she was red-eyed with weeping, wretched, waiting the word she dreaded and expected. Dinner was served, but neither ate, neither spoke. The Emperor rose from the table, she followed “with slow steps, her handkerchief over her mouth, as if to stifle her sobs.” The page came with the coffee, offering the tray to the Empress, as he had always done. But Napoleon, looking steadily at Josephine, took the tray, poured the coffee, sweetened it, and drank; and Josephine knew that they had reached the parting of the ways. The tray was handed back to the page, the attendants withdrew at a sign from the master, Napoleon closed the door, and then with face as cold and sad as death he spoke of the divorce.
Constant, the valet, dreading “some terrible event,” had sat down outside by the door. He heard shrieks, and rushed forward. The Emperor opened the door, the Empress was on the floor, “weeping and crying enough to break one’s heart.” They lifted her and bore her to her room, Napoleon assisting. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was broken and trembling. It was a bitter night to them both, and Napoleon visited her room several times to inquire after her condition. He did not sleep; he did not utter a word to his attendants. “I have never seen him,” writes Constant, “in such affliction.”
But his resolution stood, and on December 16, 1809, the divorce was formally pronounced. There was a final heart-breaking interview in Napoleon’s bedchamber, to which the stricken wife had come to say good-by; there were sobs and tears and tender, regretful words; then Josephine, weeping, went back to her room, leaving Napoleon “silent as the grave, and so buried in his bed that it was impossible for one to see his face.”
The ex-Empress’s humiliation was softened in every manner possible. She was regally endowed with pensions and estates; she was treated with the most delicate respect; the friendship between herself and Napoleon remained uninterrupted; he delighted to do her honor; and her place in the Empire remained one of dignity and grandeur. Once the Emperor, returning from the chase with the kings of Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg, stopped at Malmaison to pay the ex-Empress a visit, and spent an hour in the château with her while the three little kings waited and lunched at her gate.
* * * * *
Napoleon’s first thought was to wed a sister of the Czar of Russia, and proposals to that effect were made. The mother of the princess, however, was bitterly opposed to Napoleon, and alleged that her daughter was too young. Alexander, greatly embarrassed, asked for time. To the impatient Emperor of the French this evasion seemed to cover a refusal, and he would not grant the delay. In the meantime the Austrian Cabinet, dreading the increased strength which such a marriage would give to the Franco-Russian alliance, let it be known to Napoleon that if he asked for the daughter of the Emperor Francis, she would be promptly delivered. Irritated by the hesitation of the Romanoffs, and flattered by the advances of the Hapsburgs, Napoleon put his foot upon the “abyss covered with flowers.” On March 11, 1810, he was married by proxy to Maria Louisa in Vienna, and the bride set out at once for Paris. “Take as your standpoint that children are wanted,” Napoleon had frankly written to his negotiator at St. Petersburg: and the Austrian princess understood the situation thoroughly. After a triumphal progress through the provinces of the Empire, she reached the French frontier, was formally received, her clothing all changed, her Austrian attendants relieved, and France, taking her precious person in custody, reclothed her, surrounded her with a fresh lot of attendants, and hastened with her in the direction of Compiègne, where by appointment she was to meet her imperial spouse. Napoleon had himself dictated, to the minutest detail, every movement of the bridal party, and he awaited its coming with the utmost impatience, “cursing the ceremonial and the fêtes which delayed the arrival of his young bride.”
At length when Maria was within ten leagues of Soissons, Napoleon broke from all restraint.
At the top of his voice he shouted to his valet: “Heigho, Constant! Order a carriage without livery, and come and dress me!”
He bathed, he perfumed, he dressed, laughing all the time like a boy at the effect which the surprise he was planning would produce on his bride. Over his uniform he drew the gray overcoat he had worn at Wagram; and calling Murat to go with him, he secretly left the park of Compiègne, entered the plain carriage, and dashed along the road beyond Soissons. The rain was pouring down when he and Murat reached Courcelles, where they left the carriage and stood in the porch of the church for the bridal train to come up. Signing to the postilions to stop, Napoleon had intended to reach Maria Louisa unannounced; but the equerry, recognizing him, let down the step and called out, “His Majesty!”
“Didn’t you see that I signed you to be silent?” exclaimed Napoleon, in a pet. But his ill-humor vanished at once, he hastened into the carriage, and flung his arms around the neck of his bride, who, nicely tutored, was all graceful submission, and who, looking from his face to his portrait which she held in her hand, remembered to say, “Your portrait does not flatter you.”