after the divorce—navarre—josephine’s suspicions of the emperor—her gradual return to happiness
although divorced, josephine was still empress of the french people, and her income and her position were in keeping with her title. by the decree of the senate, her income was fixed at 2,000,000 francs ($400,000), but the emperor found means of increasing this, by making her many splendid presents, and by ordering that any unusual outlay, such as that for repairs at malmaison, be paid from the civil list. she was to have three separate homes: malmaison, always her favorite residence, upon the chateau and grounds of which she had for years lavished money, and in which she had carried out every fantasy of building, decoration and gardening, that entered her head; the elysée palace in paris, at present the residence of the presidents of the french republic; and navarre, a chateau near evreux.
not only did josephine receive money and property; napoleon took care that her suite was in keeping with her rank. it was as large, indeed, as that of many of the reigning sovereigns of europe, and included some of the cleverest and wittiest men and women of france. to the emperor’s honor, the persons chosen were all of them in sympathy with the empress and loved by her. more than one of those in josephine’s household, indeed, would have been welcomed in the suite of marie louise; but being offered their choice, 424remained with josephine. mme. de remusat was a notable example. she stayed with josephine solely because of her affection and sense of loyalty and in spite of the fact that her husband was the first chamberlain of napoleon.
if josephine had any idea that her divorce was going to separate her from paris and the society of her friends, she immediately found out her mistake. the day after her arrival at malmaison, in spite of a heavy shower, the road from paris was one long line of carriages of persons hastening to the chateau to pay her their respects. those persons who did stay away because uncertain whether the emperor was sincere in his declaration that josephine was to keep her rank as empress had to submit to severe reproofs. “have you been to see the empress josephine?” he began to ask, after a day or two, and if the courtier said no, the emperor frowned and said, “you must go, sir!” and as a result everybody did go, and continued to go. indeed, later in the winter, when josephine came to the elysée for a short time, her house was a veritable court.
but josephine had received a blow which wealth, rank, and friends could not cure. the man who once had wearied her by his passion and who had had to beg and threaten to persuade her to pass a week with him in italy, had in turn become the object of as passionate affection as she was capable of feeling. she had for years now regarded his slightest wish. in devoting herself to napoleon in order to save her position she had learned to love him. her pain now was the greater because she could not believe that napoleon meant it when he said that he still should love and protect her and that he should honor her for her sacrifice as never before. she seemed to feel that, after she had said good-by to him at the tuileries, she would never see him again. she gave way utterly to her grief, weeping night and day. napoleon kept his word, however. two days 425after her arrival at malmaison he came to see her and frequently in the days that followed, up to the time of his marriage with marie louise, at the end of march, he made her little visits. they were always formal, in the presence of attendants, but they did much to persuade the empress that napoleon intended to keep his promises to her. after every visit however, came paroxysms of weeping. napoleon kept himself informed of josephine’s state, and wrote her frequent notes, chiding her for this weakness, assuring her of his love, and begging her to have courage.
“i found you weaker than you should have been,” he wrote one day. “you have shown some courage; you must find a way of keeping it up. you must not give up to melancholy, you must try to be contented, and above all, take care of your health, which is so precious to me. if you love me, you ought to try to be strong and happy. you must not doubt my constant and tender friendship. you misunderstand entirely my feelings if you suppose that i can be happy when you are not happy, and above all, when you are not contented.”
“savary told me that you were weeping yesterday,” he wrote another day. “i hope that you have been able to go out to-day. i am sending you the results of my hunt yesterday. i will come to see you just as soon as you will promise me that you have regained your self-control and that your courage has the upper hand. good-by, dear; i am sad to-day, too, for i have need of knowing that you are satisfied and courageous.”
after returning to the tuileries, he wrote her:—“eugène told me that you were sad yesterday. that is not well, dear; it is contrary to what you promised me. it has been a sorrow to me to see the tuileries again; the great palace seems empty, and i am lost here.”
the visits, the gifts, the letters of the emperor really 426made the empress worse rather than better; and finally mme. de remusat took the matter in hand.
“the empress passed a most unhappy morning,” she wrote to her husband; “she received a few visits which only increased her grief, and then every time anything comes from the emperor she goes off into a terrible paroxysm. some way must be found to persuade the emperor to moderate his expressions of regret and affection, for whenever he gives a sign of his own sadness she falls into despair, and really her head seems turned. i take care of her as well as i can, but she causes me the greatest sorrow. she is sweet, suffering, affectionate; in fact, everything that is calculated to tear one’s heart. in showing his affection, the emperor only makes her worse. however she suffers, there is never a complaint escapes her; she is really as gentle as an angel.... try, if you can, to have the emperor write to her so as to encourage her, and let him never send anything in the evening, because that gives her a terrible night. she cannot endure his expressions of regret. doubtless, she could endure coldness still less, but there must be a medium way. she was in such a state yesterday after the last letter of the emperor that i was on the point of writing him myself at the trianon.”
as time went on and josephine found that she really had no reason to suspect the emperor of withdrawing the friendship he had promised, she began to imagine that he meant to keep her always at malmaison, never to allow her to go again to paris. this alarm probably was due to gossip that reached her. she no doubt would have preferred remaining at malmaison if this fear had not arisen. she was so overcome by suspicion that she tested his sincerity by asking permission to go to paris. she did this in spite of the fact that the talk of the forthcoming marriage—not yet settled, but in full negotiation—was in everybody’s mouth. 427the emperor’s reply to her request was kind. “i shall be glad to know that you are at the elysée, and happy to see you oftener, for you know how much i love you.” in the course of this correspondence about her coming he could not help scolding her a little, however. “i have just told eugène that you would rather listen to the gossip of the town than to what i tell you.”
and yet, even in this period of distress, josephine was not idle; nor was she so selfish in her grief that she forgot her friends. napoleon’s letters to her record more than one promise of a favor she had asked for somebody. she even interested herself actively in securing a princess for the emperor. summoning the countess de metternich of austria, just arrived in paris, she told her frankly that she should consider the sacrifice she had made a pure waste if the emperor did not marry the archduchess of austria. at that time napoleon had not decided on his future empress; but the negotiations thus opened by josephine enabled metternich to prepare the way in austria so that, when the time came, there were none of the delays which had irritated napoleon in applying for the hand of the russian princess as he did first. the negotiations for the hand of marie louise terminated favorably, and the wedding was set for march.
as the day drew near, a sense of the impropriety of josephine remaining at malmaison during the ceremonies, grew on napoleon, and he asked her to spend the month of april at navarre. she arrived there the very day that marie louise entered paris. navarre was not an attractive place to take possession of with a large household like josephine’s at that season of the year, and the company, used to the luxury of malmaison, found themselves obliged to camp out in great discomfort in an old, damp, half-furnished chateau, where neither doors nor windows would shut securely and where every chimney smoked. repairs were 428quickly made, however, and furniture in quantities was sent from paris. in the interval, the whole suite seems to have endured the experience good-naturedly, and josephine made a really brave effort to adapt herself to her new situation and to forget her grief. she set herself to finding out the resources of her new estate, driving daily through the parks; she superintended the gardens, planned repairs and improvements in the chateau, looked up the poor and sick, invited in the people of evreux whom she wanted to know, and every night played her favorite game of tric-trac with the bishop of the diocese. it was a good beginning for a useful and eventually a happy life for her, and all would have gone very well if she could have dismissed the idea that after all napoleon did not mean to keep his promises to her—that it was only a question of time when he would lose his interest, withdraw his support, drive her from france.
two weeks passed after the marriage, and no word came to her from the emperor. in the meantime, she was receiving letters from eugène and hortense, who were required to be present at the ceremonies, and every member of her suite had daily bulletins of the gaieties at the capital and of its gossip. hints reached her that it was probable the emperor would not consider it proper for her to return soon to malmaison, if he did at all. her worry became a veritable panic, and before she had been three weeks at navarre, she asked permission to return to malmaison. it was granted at once; thereupon she sent the emperor a stilted letter of thanks. her letter and the reply it brought from the emperor are excellent examples of the masculine and feminine ways of looking at the same situation. josephine’s letter read:—
sire:—i have just received from my son the assurance that your majesty consents to my return to malmaison and that you have been good enough to advance to me the money that i have asked to make 429the chateau of navarre habitable. this double favor, sire, dissipates largely the unrest and even the fears that the long silence of your majesty had awakened. i was afraid of being entirely banished from your mind; i see that i have not been. i am less unhappy to-day in consequence; i am even as happy as it will ever be possible for me to be.
at the end of the month i shall go to malmaison since your majesty sees no objection to it, but i should say to you, sire, that i should not so soon take advantage of the liberty which your majesty has given me if the house at navarre did not need so many repairs, both on account of my health and that of my suite. my plan is to stay at malmaison a very short time. i shall soon go to the springs. but while i am at malmaison your majesty may be sure i shall live as if i were a thousand leagues from paris. i have made a great sacrifice, sire and each day i feel it more. however, this sacrifice shall be complete; your majesty shall not be disturbed in your happiness by any expression of regrets on my part. i shall pray ceaselessly for your majesty’s happiness, but your majesty may be sure that i shall always respect his new situation; i shall respect it in silence, having confidence in the feeling that he once had for me. i shall not try to awaken any new proof of it; i shall trust in your justice and in your heart. i ask but one favor; it is that your majesty shall deign to give me now and then some proof that i have a small place in your thoughts and a large place in your esteem and your friendship. this will soften my grief without, it seems to me, compromising that which is much more important than all to me, the happiness of your majesty.
josephine.
napoleon replied:—
my dear:—i received your letter of the 19th of april. the style is very bad. i am always the same; men like me never change. i do not know what eugène could have said to you. i did not write you because you had not written me; my only desire is to be agreeable to you. i am glad that you are going to malmaison and that you are contented. i shall go there to find out how you are and to give you news of myself. now compare this letter with yours, and after that i will let you judge which is the more friendly, yours or mine. good-bye, my dear. take care of yourself, and be just to yourself and to me.
napoleon.
having permission to return to malmaison, josephine was satisfied to remain at navarre. in fact, she was beginning to enjoy the place and particularly the plans for its 430improvements. it was not until may that she returned to malmaison, where she remained a month. later she spent three months at aix-en-savoy and then made a trip in switzerland.
on the whole, the summer and fall of 1810 were not unpleasant. she had dismissed, for the time, her doubt of the emperor, and suffered only from the separation from him. that separation napoleon did as much as the situation allowed to soften. in may, after her return to malmaison, he went to see her, and the visit seems to have been as free from restraint and grief as could be expected. josephine was greatly pleased by the emperor’s attention. “yesterday was a day of joy for me,” she wrote to hortense. “the emperor came to see me. his presence made me happy, though it awakened my sorrow. as long as he stayed with me i had the courage to keep back my tears, but when he was gone, i was not able to restrain them, and i found myself very wretched. he was as good as ever to me, and i hope he read in my heart all the devotion and tenderness i feel for him.”
not only did napoleon go to visit her, he conceived a notion incomprehensible to a feminine mind of some day taking marie louise, and broached the subject one day as the two were driving near malmaison in josephine’s absence, by asking the empress if she would not like to go over the chateau. marie louise immediately began to cry, and napoleon, overwhelmed by what he had done, though probably not understanding at all, never ventured to go further. he probably saw no reason why the two women could not in private be friends.
everywhere that josephine went in these first journeys after her divorce she was received with such expressions of devotion and interest that she must have been convinced that the people had adopted the emperor’s view of the divorce 431and looked upon her as one who had sacrificed herself for the country. curiously enough, they brought petitions to her praying her to remit them to the emperor; her influence over him and her relation to him were thus publicly acknowledged. in all the interviews josephine gave to persons who sought her as she traveled she was exceedingly discreet; especially admirable was the way in which she talked of the emperor. it was as of a brother whom she loved dearly and whose interests she had deeply at heart. although, as a rule, she received cordially all who sought her, she did refuse, if she believed the person hostile to napoleon. in september, while josephine was in switzerland, mme. de sta?l, then in exile, tried to secure an interview. josephine declined. “i know her too well,” she said, “to wish an interview. in the first book she published, she would report our conversation, and the lord only knows how many things she would make me say of which i never thought.”
432
eugénie hortense de beauharnais. 1783–1837.
daughter of josephine, wife of louis, king of holland, and mother of napoleon iii.
433one real and serious cause of unhappiness for josephine was removed in part this summer. it was her daughter hortense’s trouble. the poor queen of holland had for a long time been hopelessly embroiled with the king, louis bonaparte, and her daily letters to her mother during the winter and spring were hysterical cries of bitterness and despair. josephine shows nowhere in better light than in her replies. during all this period of her own sorrow she wrote constantly to hortense letters full of cheer, of wise counsel, and of the tenderest affection. the doubt of the emperor which seized her now and then she never allowed hortense to entertain. she never advised anything but courage and forbearance in her relations to king louis. she held before her her duty to her little sons, to the people of holland, who had always loved her, and to her mother. in july, louis put an end to the sad situation by abdicating his throne, which by the constitution went to the queen. napoleon promptly annexed holland to france. “this emancipates the queen,” the emperor wrote to josephine, “and your unhappy daughter can come to paris, where, with her sons, she will be perfectly happy.” it was not going to paris, however, that pleased hortense; it was release from louis, the care of her sons, and rejoining her mother. indeed, louis bonaparte’s cowardly conduct in holland brought great relief to both hortense and josephine, especially was the latter happy at being able to have the children, napoleon louis and louis napoleon, or little oui-oui, as she called him, (afterwards napoleon iii.) with her. she really was an ideal grandmother, everybody conceded, the children first of all. their opinion was happily expressed once by louis, who, when a lady of the court was leaving to see her husband, said soberly, “she must love m. a—— very much if she will leave grandmama to go and see him.”
when josephine left malmaison in june, she had intended traveling in italy, after switzerland, and spending the winter at milan with her son. her old terror of being forgotten by the emperor and driven from france seized her in september, however, and for weeks she tormented herself with the notion that it was napoleon’s plan not to allow her to return to france. she had no reason for the supposition beyond the gossip which came to her and the fears of her own sore heart; but this was enough to persuade her so thoroughly that she was to be exiled that her health began to fail. she succeeded, too, in communicating her fears to the ladies of her suite, and the little company made themselves wretched in the classical feminine way over a possibility for which there was no foundation whatever.
434
louis bonaparte. 1778–1846.
king of holland in 1806. abdicated in 1810, taking the title of comte de st. leu.
435finally, josephine wrote a humble letter to napoleon, asking permission to spend the winter at navarre. he replied at once, that of course she might go there if she would. the household were thrown in hysterical transports of joy by this permission, and they hastened northward for a long winter in a provincial chateau as if italy was a prison and the honors they would have received there mockery and insult.
in spite of the fact that navarre was not a suitable winter residence even when in the best condition, and that the changes and repairs planned were still incomplete, josephine and her household passed a really happy winter and spring there. the life was a simple and wholesome one, free from the exacting ceremonies and the tiresome restraints of the court, and the health of them all, and notably of josephine, improved. instead of late hours and heated rooms and great crowds, there were the healthy habits of the country, constant outdoor sports, the plain people of evreux. josephine found the headaches, which for so long a time had tormented her, almost totally disappearing. as her health improved she wept less, and her eyes, which she had seriously injured since the divorce, by her constant tears, grew better. the unfailing sweetness of her disposition in her trial had, up to this time, been combined with such weakness and suspicions that its beauty had been obscured. when, one after another, her alarms proved to be unfounded; when each time she found she received what she asked; when napoleon continued to write her as a dear friend, to visit her from time to time, to do for her children; when, after the birth of the king of rome, he even arranged that she should see the child, and when from every side she continued to hear praise for her sacrifice which had made an heir possible, she took courage. with the return of peace to her distracted heart, she began to fill her life fuller of useful and pleasant occupations. she established a school at navarre, where poor children were taught; she improved the town promenade, and built a little theater; she fed the hungry, cared for the sick; proved herself, indeed, a veritable providence to the whole country-side.
436
napoleon and the king of rome.
bronze from the collection of prince victor. this elegant figure is a faithful reproduction of a medallion made by andrieu, on the birth of the king of rome.
437in her own family, too, she was a good genius. hortense was now at the court of marie louise, and josephine was as ever her confidant and adviser. the two little princes she kept much with her, relieving hortense of their care. napoleon was particularly pleased with this arrangement, knowing how much it would do to make josephine happy, and feeling, too, that her training was an excellent thing for the lads. even when the children were with hortense, much of her time was taken up with providing playthings for them and for the little folks at milan. mlle. ducrest says that the salon at malmaison often looked like a warehouse in the rue du coq, so full was it of toys, and there was no surer way of pleasing josephine than admiring the trifles she was constantly buying for her grandchildren.
eugène frequently made brief visits to napoleon, and josephine’s pride in him and in the place he held in the emperor’s respect and affection was great. she rejoiced that eugène was happy in his married life, loved his wife, the good and beautiful augusta, daughter of the king of bavaria; and when she went to italy to visit the court at milan, as she did in eugène’s absence in 1812, at the confinement of the princess, she came away with her heart abrim with maternal joy.
indeed, josephine grew more and more beloved throughout the years 1811 and 1812 as she added cheerfulness and courage to her amiability. “you are adored at milan,” wrote eugène to her once. “they are writing me charming things about you. you turn the head of everybody who comes near you.” even marie louise laid aside her jealousy of josephine after the birth of the king of rome, and by many little attentions to hortense added to josephine’s 438happiness. she was something in france, she felt; she was honored, her place was secure.
nobody was better satisfied than napoleon himself at seeing josephine take the position he had conceived she should have, and her returning cheerfulness was a constant pleasure to him. only one subject of contention seems to have occurred between them at this period that was the old one of josephine’s extravagance. she could not be persuaded to live within her income, and finally napoleon took the matter rigorously in hand, writing to the minister of the public exchequer the following letter:—
1st november, 1811.
you will do well to send privately for the empress josephine’s comptroller and make him aware that nothing will be paid over to him, unless proof is furnished that there are no debts; and, as i will have no shilly-shallying on the subject, this must be guaranteed on the comptroller’s own property. you will therefore notify the comptroller, that from the 1st of january next, no payment will be made, either in your office, or by the crown treasury, until he has given an undertaking that no debts exist, and made his own property responsible for the fact. i have information that the expenditure in that household is exceedingly careless. you will, therefore, see the comptroller, and put yourself in possession of all facts regarding money matters; for it is absurd that instead of saving two millions of money, as the empress should have done, she should have more debts to be paid. it will be easy for you to find out the truth about this from the comptroller, and to make him understand that he himself might be seriously compromised.
take an opportunity of seeing the empress josephine yourself, and give her to understand that i trust her household will be managed with more economy, and that if any debts are left outstanding, she will incur my sovereign displeasure. the empress louise has only 100 000 crowns; she pays everything every week; she does without gowns, and denies herself, so as never to owe money.
my intention is, then, that from the 1st of january, no payment shall be made for the empress josephine’s household without a certificate from the comptroller, to the effect that she has no debts. look into her budget for 1811, and that prepared for 1812. it should not amount to more than a million. if too many horses are kept, some of them must be put down. the empress josephine, who has children and grandchildren, 439ought to economise, and so be of some use to them, instead of running into debt.
i desire you will not make any more payments to queen hortense, either on account of her appanage, or for wood-felling, without asking my permission. confer with her comptroller too, so that her household may be properly managed, and that she may not only keep out of debt, but regulate her expenditure in a fitting manner.
