After the French defeat at Aspern (May 22, 1809), and while they were
shut up in the island of Lobau, it had seemed that Napoleon’s position
was almost desperate. The Tyrolese were in revolt, and had expelled
the French and Bavarians; the young Duke of Brunswick had invaded
Saxony and driven Napoleon’s vassal king from his capital. Popular
insurrections broke out in Würtemberg and Westphalia; England was
holding her ground in Portugal, and was preparing an armament to fall
upon the Dutch coast. Prussian statesmen, officers, preachers, poets,
and patriots were clamoring for war. In this anxious crisis the courage
and confidence of Napoleon were perfect. To beat the Austrians in his
front was the one thing he must do. Succeeding in that, resistance
elsewhere would disappear. Failing in that, all was lost. Thus Napoleon
had reasoned, and he had judged rightly. After Wagram his peril passed.
Austria, after having pledged faith to the Tyrolese, coldly deserted
them, and they were crushed. Brunswick’s effort failed as Schill’s had
failed; popular insurrections were stamped out; Prussia dared not move;
and England’s “Walcheren expedition” against Flushing and Antwerp ended
in utter failure and heavy loss. Everywhere Napoleon’s Empire stood
the test: Eugène beat the Austrians in Italy; and Wellington, after
defeating Victor at Talavera, was driven back into Portugal by Soult.
Out of the storm which had threatened his very existence, Napoleon came
forth with frontiers extended to the borders of Turkey, cutting off
Austria from the sea--an empire stretching in unbroken line from Bosnia
to the straits of Calais.
Never had Napoleon’s power seemed so great, nor his court so splendid.
His vassal kings came to Paris with brilliant retinues, the kings of
Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, Würtemberg, and Naples, the Viceroy of
Italy, the Queen of Holland, besides princes and dukes by the dozen.
Paris had become the capital of Continental Europe, and from Paris went
forth the law to eighty million people. All Frenchmen realized the
grandeur of this huge empire; but many a wise Frenchman was oppressed
by anxieties. What if the Emperor should suddenly die? Would the
succession go quietly to his brothers, or would the mighty fabric fall
to pieces? All this power, all this splendor, hung as by a single hair
upon the life of Napoleon; and there were others besides Talleyrand and
Fouché who speculated upon what should be done if the Emperor should
fall in battle. When the bullet struck his toe at Ratisbonne, the
troops broke ranks and crowded toward him in their breathless eagerness
to know whether he were seriously hurt; and the far-seeing said,
“Suppose the ball had struck two feet higher!” When it became known
that a young German fanatic, Staps, bent on assassinating the Emperor,
had almost reached him with his knife when stopped, the same uneasy
feeling prevailed. Too much depended on this one life. The Emperor had
no bodily heir; by Josephine he would never have one; the favorite
nephew, Hortense’s son, the little Napoleon, might have been adopted,
but he died of croup in Holland.
* * * * *
His power in the north being now secure, it was expected that Napoleon
would take charge of the war in the south, and end it. He could easily
have done so. England had less than thirty thousand troops there,
and the native soldiers, Spaniards and Portuguese, could not have
stood against French veterans led by the greatest soldiers of all
time. Besides, he could have crushed resistance by the mere weight of
numbers. Why did he never return to Spain? Joseph was blundering as
stupidly as mortal could; the French commanders were not acting in
concert, but were pulling against each other; things were going as
badly as the English could reasonably expect; and nowhere in the Empire
was its Emperor needed worse than here. But Napoleon, once so quick
to rush to the point of danger, let the “Spanish ulcer” run, year in
and year out, with an apathy for which it is impossible to account.
Either he had grown fonder of his personal ease, or the dreary kind of
warfare necessary to reduce a national uprising did not appeal to his
imagination, or he feared that in his absence the north might again
give trouble, or he took an imperial pride in seeming to say to the
world that the insurrection in the south was too trifling a matter for
his personal attention and could be left to his lieutenants.
Whatever the motive, he astonished his enemies no less than his friends
by failing to follow up Wagram with the complete conquest of the
peninsula. Three hundred thousand French soldiers in Spain propped
feeble Joseph on his throne; but they were never able to put down
resistance or expel the English.
Another serious matter which might have been settled at this time was
his quarrel with the Pope.
The Concordat had accomplished great results for both contracting
parties, and at first both were highly satisfied. Napoleon complacently
rubbed his hands and declared, “With my soldiers, my prefects, and my
priests I can do as I like.”
But, after all, the Concordat was a compromise. Neither party got quite
what was wanted. Napoleon expected that there would result a clergy
wholly dependent upon his will; a pope who would be a sort of clerical
lieutenant obeying imperial orders, content to move as a lesser light
in the Napoleonic system. The Pope, on the other hand, eagerly expected
a restoration, gradually, of the former spiritual prestige of the
Church. When Napoleon was seen to attend Mass, and kneel for blessing
or prayer, clerical fancy readily pictured the return of the good old
times when pious Bourbon kings and their official mistresses had fallen
on their knees at the feet of Jesuit confessors, and allowed the reins
of government to be pulled by the Church. Especially did the Pope look
for the restoration of his full temporal power, the return of the lost
legations in Italy.
Both parties found themselves in grievous error. Napoleon not only
believed he had done quite enough for the Church, but was inclined to
think he had done too much. At any rate, he flatly declined to do more.
He would not put priests in charge of the state schools; he would not
restore the legations. He was ready to lavish respectful attentions
upon the head of the Church, ready to aid him in restoring public
worship, ready to fill his coffers with cash; but in the Concordat, the
solemn contract already agreed on, he would make no change.
So the Pope had left Paris after the coronation in ill-humor. He
refused to crown Napoleon at Milan; refused to annul Jerome’s marriage;
refused to recognize Joseph Bonaparte as King of Naples; refused to
close his ports to English commerce. Professing neutrality, he became
as much the enemy of France as he had been when an avowed member
of the European league against the Revolution. Enemies of Napoleon
flocked to Rome and found friendly welcome there. Fugitives from
French justice took refuge under papal immunity, and were protected.
The Roman court, as in the time of the Revolution, became a nucleus of
anti-French sentiment and intrigue. Papal animosity to the French did
not cool its ire when it saw him do in Spain what he had wished to do
in Italy--abolish the Inquisition. Napoleon complained, remonstrated,
threatened--all to no purpose. Meekly obstinate, piously implacable,
the Pope refused to come to terms, using God’s name, of course, as a
sanction to his own line of conduct.
During the campaign of 1809 Napoleon proclaimed the abolition of the
temporal power of the Pope, and the papal territories were incorporated
in the kingdom of Italy. The Pope’s spiritual powers were not
challenged: his revenues were largely increased. The Pope protested, as
usual, that the temporal power, lands, cities, rich revenues, were the
patrimony of St. Peter, of God, and that he, the Pope, had no right to
give them up. Napoleon, in effect, replied that what a French emperor
had given, a French emperor could take away; and that it ill became the
successor of Peter and the vicar of the homeless, moneyless Christ to
be making such eternal clamor about money, wealth, lands, and earthly
power and splendor. The situation at Rome, where French authorities
and papal authorities were in conflict, became so embarrassing that
the Pope was finally arrested, carried to Savona, and lodged in a
palace there. Later, he was transferred to the magnificent château of
Fontainebleau in France, where he was luxuriously lodged and treated as
a prince.
This complete rupture between Napoleon and the Church might never have
been more than an annoyance, a crab nibbling at the toe of Hercules,
had Napoleon continued fortunate. But when disasters thickened, and his
powers began to totter, the papal legions were not the weakest of those
who assaulted his wavering lines.
Well had it been for France had Napoleon, in 1810, given personal
attention to the Spanish war; equally well had he come to some terms
with the Pope, who had excommunicated him. The longer each trouble was
neglected, the more difficult its treatment became.
* * * * *
Napoleon would not go to Spain, he would not settle his differences
with the Pope; but he made up his mind to bring to an issue another
long-deferred and vitally important matter--that of divorcing Josephine.
The Emperor must have an heir, the question of succession must not be
left open longer: political necessity was inexorable: ambition would
tolerate no obstacle.
Great as a man may become, he is human after all; and Napoleon flinched
from saying the fateful word to Josephine. From time to time he shrank
from the pitiful task, and the way in which he led up to it is full of
the pathos which sometimes lies in small things. Whenever Napoleon
was at home, it was the custom for a page to bring in coffee for the
Emperor after dinner. Every day Josephine herself would take the
tray, pour the coffee, sweeten it, cool it, taste it, and hand it to
Napoleon. Years had come and gone, and the little domestic custom had
become as fixed as the relation of man and wife.
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.”
Napoleon was in ecstasies. He was a boy again, amorous, rapturous,
seeing everything with the eyes of a lover. Soissons had prepared a
magnificent reception and banquet, but Napoleon could not think of
tarrying. He must hasten on to Compiègne with the blushing Maria that
very night. “He made love like a hussar!” some have sneered. So he did,
and most men who are not invalids or frigid decadents make love like
hussars. Furthermore, most women who are young, healthy, and sane, have
a stealthy preference for the hussar style of love-making.
Etiquette had prepared a bed for Maria at the Chancellor’s, and one for
Napoleon at the palace. Etiquette insisted that this separation was
decorous, was most essential, was demanded by precedent and custom.
“Not so,” maintained Napoleon; “Henry IV. breached the custom, and so
will I.”
Had not the marriage already taken place in Vienna? If that ceremony,
solemnized by the Archbishop of Vienna was valid, were not Napoleon
and Maria man and wife? Why, then, separate apartments? He decided
that a husband’s rights were already his, and Maria made no strenuous
objection,--so well had she been tutored in Vienna. Read what the
imperial _valet-de-chambre_, Constant, writes:--
“The next morning at his toilet the Emperor asked me if any one had
noticed his change of the programme.” Constant lied, like a good
servant, and “I told him, no.” At that moment entered one of the
Emperor’s intimates who was unmarried. Pinching his ears, his Majesty
said to him: “Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women
in the world: gentle, good, artless and as fresh as roses.” And
Constant states that Napoleon “was charmingly gay all the remainder of
the day.”
With imperial pomp the civil and religious marriage was solemnized
at St. Cloud and Paris, April 1 and 2, 1810. The illuminations, the
processions, the festivities, were gorgeous beyond description. After
these were ended, there was a grand tour of the provinces by the
imperial couple. Returning to Paris, the Austrian ambassador, Prince
Schwarzenberg, tendered them the magnificent fête during which the
tapestries in the vast temporary ballroom caught on fire, the building
burned to the ground, and some of the revellers met fiery death.
[Illustration: MARIA LOUISA
From the portrait by Gérard in the Louvre]
As to Maria Louisa it may be said, once for all, that she was a
commonplace woman, with no talent, no character, no graces of manner,
and no beauty. She was strong, healthy, physically fresh and buxom,
therefore admirably suited to Napoleon’s immediate purpose. She was
never a companion to him, never had any influence over him, never had
any love for him, never understood or appreciated him. Dull, indolent,
sensual, capable of no warm attachment, she simply yielded to her
father’s policy, married where she was told to marry, obeyed Napoleon
as she was told to obey him, accepted his caresses, ate four or five
times per day, bore him a child, pleaded her health against the bearing
of more, gave herself little concern about his reverses, left him when
her father called for her to leave him, took up with another man whom
her father selected, lived with him in much contentment, and bore him
several children.
* * * * *
Increasingly heavy became to Napoleon the burden of his family. Joseph
in Spain required huge armies and huge subsidies to uphold him there,
and his correspondence with his brother was one long, lugubrious
howl for “more.” Jerome’s reckless dissipations and extravagance in
Westphalia scandalized Germany, bringing reproach upon the Empire.
Lucien contributed his share of mischief by encouraging the ill-temper
of the Pope. Pauline, Caroline, Elisa were so many thorns in the flesh,
so many annoyances more or less acute. Brother-in-law Murat, by his
pride and boasting and complaints, disgusted friends of the Emperor,
arousing jealousies among old comrades who had not been made kings.
Mother Letitia, like the mother of Washington, complained that the
illustrious son had not done enough for the author of his being. Uncle
Fesch, now a cardinal, had absorbed all the essence of his clerical
order, and maddened his nephew by opposition in the quarrel with Rome.
And to cap a climax and advertise family feuds to the world, Louis
Bonaparte vacated the throne of Holland, left the country privately,
and went, almost as a fugitive, to “drink the waters” at Teplitz in
Bohemia. For some days it was not even known what had become of him.
The Emperor’s grief, anger, and mortification were extreme. Stunned by
the blow dealt him by his brother, he said in broken voice: “To think
that Louis should make me this return! When I was a poor lieutenant of
artillery, I divided my slender pay with him, fed him, taught him as
though he were my son.” And this cross-grained, thankless Louis had
brought shame upon Emperor and Empire! Why? Because the brother who had
put the sceptre in his hand wished him to rule Holland as a province
of the Empire, in line with the policy of the Empire, sharing all the
benefits of the Empire, and sharing likewise its burdens! Because
Napoleon would not consent that Holland should violate the Continental
system, and become practically the ally of England in the great
struggle for national supremacy, Louis had dropped the crown and gone
away to drink mineral water in Bohemia.
A very aggravating mortal must have been this Louis, on general
principles. Yielding to his brother’s influence, he had wedded
Hortense, the daughter of Josephine. There was no love prior to this
marriage, and none afterward. Despite Napoleon’s repeated, patient
efforts, the two could never harmonize. With or without reason, Louis
suspected the virtue of his wife. Ugly rumor reported that the first
child of Hortense was not begotten by Louis, but by Napoleon. The
younger brother may not have believed the story, but the fondness of
the childless elder brother for the son of the younger, attracted
attention and excited remark. The child was a promising boy; he was
named after his uncle Napoleon, and he was devotedly fond of this
uncle. The little fellow would come into Napoleon’s room, put on the
Emperor’s hat, catch up his sword, put the belt over his shoulders,
and, whistling a military air, go marching about in military style,
with the sword dragging along on the floor. And Napoleon would be
thrown into ecstasy, and would cry out, rubbing his hands: “Look at
him! See the pretty picture!”
His love for the boy growing with the boy’s growth, Napoleon had
offered to make him King of Italy, preparatory, doubtless, to adopting
him as heir to the Empire. Louis would not hear of it. Put his son
above _him_? Give his child a throne, when he himself had none? Never
in the world! So he objected flatly, saying to his brother with
unparalleled impudence, “Such a favor from you to this child would
revive the rumors that you are his father.”
Is it any wonder that Napoleon’s temper escaped control, and that he
caught Louis about the body and flung him out at the door?
The little Napoleon had died, Hortense had separated from her
impossible spouse, and was going a rapid pace of her own, with a
certain Duc de Flahaut, famous for his shapely legs,--so much so that
they wrung from the Emperor an exclamation on the subject of Flahaut
and “his eternal legs.” Holland’s throne was vacant: what was Napoleon
to do? Give it to some one else who would be as ungrateful as Louis
had been? Abandon it entirely, and see England get a foothold there?
To escape the dilemma, Holland was annexed to the Empire (July, 1810).
* * * * *
The royal line of Sweden was about to become extinct. It became
necessary to provide for the succession. The Swedes decided to choose
a Crown Prince from among the illustrious Frenchmen who stood around
Napoleon’s throne. They wished to win Napoleon’s good-will and
protection by selecting one of his favorites, and they were made to
believe that they could not please him better than by the choice of
Bernadotte.
Were not this a matter so gravely serious, it would be comical to the
last degree. The marshal whom Napoleon most detested and distrusted
was Bernadotte. The marshal who most envied the Emperor, most hated
him, most longed to betray him, was Bernadotte. He had plotted against
his chief during the Consulate, and escaped court-martial because he
and Joseph Bonaparte had married sisters. He had left Davoust in the
lurch at Auerstädt, imperilled the army, coldly leaving thirty thousand
French to combat sixty thousand Prussians, without lifting a hand to
help the French. Again he had escaped; he was a member of the Bonaparte
family.
At Wagram his conduct had been so darkly suspicious, his proclamation
claiming a victory where he had failed miserably to do his duty, had
been so insolent, that Napoleon ordered him home in disgrace. But again
family influence prevailed, and he was made Governor of Rome.
The Swedes had not kept the run of these events, and when Bernadotte’s
agents plied them with the argument that he was a member of the
Bonaparte family, and a favorite with the Emperor, there were none to
deny. Napoleon knew what was going on. He alone could have set the
Swedes right, and nipped the intrigue in the bud. Why did he not do
so? Absolutely no satisfactory answer can be given. A word from him
would have made some other man Prince Royal of Sweden, but he would
not speak. With apathetic scorn he looked on while Bernadotte worked
the wires, feeling all the while that Bernadotte’s success would be
a misfortune to France. He not only refused to interfere, not only
refused to correct the false representations upon which the Swedes
acted, but gave his formal consent when it was asked, and furnished
Bernadotte with $400,000 to equip himself in a suitable way in setting
out to take possession of his new dignity.
* * * * *
Some months after Napoleon’s second marriage, he and the Empress stood
sponsors at the baptism of several infants of his great officers. When
the baptismal ceremony had been finished, the Emperor turned to some of
his intimate friends and said rubbing his hands together as he did when
well pleased, “Before long, gentlemen, I hope we shall have another
baby to baptize.”
This joyful intelligence gradually spreading, the whole French nation
began to look forward with a feeling of hope and satisfaction to the
birth of Napoleon’s heir.
On March 19, 1811, the Empress felt the first pains, and “the palace
was in a flutter.” Next morning early the crisis came. Napoleon
sprang out of his bath, and covered with a dressing-gown hastened
to his wife’s room, saying to the excited doctor in charge, “Come,
now, Dubois, don’t lose your head.” He embraced the suffering Empress
tenderly, but, unable to endure the sight of her anguish, went to
another room, where he stood, pale and trembling, awaiting the event.
When the physician reported that an operation might be necessary, and
that one or the other, mother or child, might have to be sacrificed
Napoleon answered, without hesitation, “Save the mother, it is her
right.”
To calm them, he said: “Forget that you are operating upon an Empress.
Treat her as though she were some shopkeeper’s wife.”
At length the cruel ordeal was over, the child safely delivered, and
the mother relieved. The Emperor sprang to her couch and covered
her with caresses. He was overwhelmed with joy; his face shone with
delight. “Well, Constant, we have a big boy!” he cried to his valet;
and to all others as he met them he continued to repeat rapturously,
“We have a big boy!” Very, very human was this “Corsican ogre,”
Napoleon Bonaparte.
If words and looks go for evidence, the warrior of Austerlitz, the
giver of crowns and kingdoms, was never so happy as when he took
his son in his arms, kissed it tenderly, and holding it toward his
courtiers, said proudly, “Gentlemen, the King of Rome!”
All Paris listened, eagerly attentive, to the great bells of Notre
Dame; steeple answered steeple, until every church had joined in
the chorus. All Paris hearkened to the cannon, counting report
after report: for if the child were a girl, the shots would stop at
twenty-one; if a boy, there would be one hundred. At the sound of
the twenty-second gun there burst out a universal shout of joy and
congratulation. “Hats flew up into the air, people ran to meet entire
strangers, and with mutual embraces shouted, _Long live the Emperor!_
Old soldiers shed tears of joy.”
Behind a curtain at the window of the palace stood Napoleon, looking
out upon this display of enthusiastic gladness. “His eyes swam with
tears, and he came in that condition to kiss his son.”
Never were national rejoicings greater at the birth of an heir to
the throne. Cities, towns, private dwellings, illuminated not only
in France, but throughout the Empire. Couriers rode with the news to
foreign courts. Congratulations poured into the Tuileries from the four
quarters of the earth. The Emperor seemed to be “walking in the midst
of a delicious dream.” He was the mightiest monarch of earth; his wife
“a daughter of the Cæsars”; his son, his long-yearned-for son, had
come, was strong and fair,--the “King of Rome!” Napoleon’s imagination
was aflame; human grandeur he had pushed to its limit.
His memory may have swept back to far-off Corsica, and to that day
of 1769 when his mother had brought him into the world, lying on the
floor “upon a wretched rug.” From that dim period to this, what a march
onward!
If Napoleon had been kind and indulgent to the barren Josephine, what
was his tenderness to the fruitful Maria! He almost smothered her with
caresses, and almost, if not quite, wearied her with attentions. As
to his boy, nothing could have been more touching than his boundless
pride in him, his infinite patience with him, his intense paternal
fondness for him.
Nothing would satisfy the Emperor but that Josephine must see his
boy. Maria must not know; Maria being jealous of the ex-Empress.
One day Napoleon had his child carried privately out to Bagatelle.
Josephine was there. The little King of Rome was presented to her.
Was she envious and jealous? Not so. She took the child in her arms,
pressed it, kissed it, wept over it, prattled “baby talk” to it,
fondling it with “unutterable tenderness” as though it were her own.
Poor Josephine! Sternly truthful historians have told us about the
infidelities and the want of honesty and scruple. With pain and sorrow
we must tell the story of these as it is told to us; but let us turn
the picture as quickly as we may, and look upon the other side--for
there is another and a brighter.
It was true womanhood at its best when the barren, discarded wife
continued to love the husband who had put her away; who loved and
fondled the offspring of the other marriage with a greater tenderness
than the child’s own mother ever showed it; who remained faithful to
Napoleon in the dark days when the second wife was false; who grieved
brokenly over his fall, and wished to share his exile.
Evermore will this record speak for Josephine; evermore will it speak
for Napoleon also.
Constant relates: “One day when Bonaparte came back very much fatigued
from hunting, he sent to ask Maria Louisa to come and see him. She
came. The Emperor took her in his arms and gave her a hearty kiss on
the cheek. Maria took her handkerchief and wiped it off.
“‘Well, Louise,’ said the Emperor, ‘so I disgust thee?’
“‘No,’ replied the Empress, ‘I have a habit of wiping myself like that.
I do the same with the King of Rome.’ The Emperor seemed dissatisfied.”
A wife and mother wiping off the kisses of husband and child reveals
her own character so fully by the act that comment is unnecessary.