The prophecy of the old woman in Martinique had now been fulfilled:
Josephine was more than a queen, she was an empress! She stood on life’s
summit, and a world lay at her feet. Before the husband who stood at her
side, the princes and the people of Europe bowed in the dust, and paid
him homage--the hero who by new victories had won ever-increasing fame
and fresh laurels, who had defeated Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and
who had engraven on the rolls of French glory the mighty victories of
Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau!
Josephine stood on the pinnacle of life; she saw the princes of foreign
states come to France as conquered, as captives, and as allies, to bring
to her husband and to herself the homage of subjects; she saw devoted
courtiers and flatterers; pomp and splendor surrounded her on every
side.
Amid this glory she remained simple and modest--she never gave up her
cheerful gentleness and mildness; she never forgot the days which had
been; she never allowed herself to be exalted by the brilliancy of the
moment to an ambitious pride or to a lofty self-conceit. The friends of
the widow Josephine de Beauharnais always found in the empress Josephine
a thankful, obliging friend, ever ready to appeal to her husband, and
intercede with him in their behalf. To the royalists, when weary of
their long exile, though poor and helpless still loyal to the royal
family--when they returned to France with bleeding feet and wounded
hearts, to implore from the Emperor of the French the privilege of
dying in their native country--to them all Josephine was a counsellor,
a helper, a compassionate protectress. With deep interest she inquired
from them how it fared with the Count de Lille, whom her heart yet
named as the King of France, though her lips dared not utter it. All the
assistance she gave to the royalists, and the protection she afforded
them, oftentimes despite Napoleon’s anger, all the loyalty, the
generosity, and self-denial she manifested, were the quiet sacrifice
which she offered to God for her own happiness, and with which she
sought to propitiate the revengeful spirit of the old monarchy,
loitering perchance in the Tuileries, where she now, in the place of the
wife of the Count de Lille, was enthroned as sovereign.
Josephine’s heart was unwearied and inexhaustible in well-doing and in
liberality; if Napoleon was truly the emperor and the father of the army
and of the soldiers, Josephine was equally the empress and the mother of
the poor and unfortunate.
But she was also, in the true sense of the word, the empress of the
happy. No one understood so well as she did how to be the leader at
festivals, to preside at a joyous company, to give new attractions by
her gracious womanly sweetness and amiableness, or to receive homage
with such beaming eyes, and to make others happy while she herself
seemed to be made happy by them.
Amid this life full of splendor and grandeur there were sad hours,
when the sun was shadowed by clouds, and the eyes of the Empress of the
French filled with such bitter tears as only the wife and the widow of
General Beauharnais could shed.
Three things especially contributed to draw these tears from the eyes of
the Empress Josephine: her jealousy, her extravagance, and, lastly, her
childlessness. Josephine was jealous, for she not only loved Napoleon,
she worshipped him as her providence, her future, her happiness. Her
heart was yet so full of passion, and so young, that it hoped for much
happiness, and could not submit to that resignation which is
satisfied to give more love than it receives, and instead of the
warm, intoxicating cup of love, to receive the cool, sober beverage of
friendship. Josephine wanted not merely to be the friend, but to remain
Napoleon’s beloved one; and she looked upon all these beautiful women
who adorned the imperial court of the Tuileries as enemies who came to
dispute with her the love of her husband.
And, alas! she had too often to acknowledge herself defeated in this
struggle, to see her rivals triumph, and for weeks to retreat into
the background before the victorious one who may have succeeded in
enchaining the inconstant heart of Napoleon, and to make the proud
Caesar bow to her love. But afterward, when love’s short dream had
vanished, Napoleon, penitent, would come back with renewed love to
his Josephine, whom he still called “the star of his happiness;” and
oftentimes, touched by her tears, he sacrificed to her anxiety and
jealousy a love-caprice, and became more affectionate, more agreeable
even, than when he had forsaken her; for then, to prove to her
how unreserved was his confidence, he often told her of his new
love-adventures, and was even indiscreet enough at times to betray all
his gallantries to her.
The second object of the constant solicitude and trials of the empress
was her extravagance. She did not understand how to economize; her
indolent creole nature found it impossible to calculate, to bring
numbers into columns, or to question tedious figures, to see if debt and
purse agreed--if her generous heart must be prevented from giving to
the poor--from rendering assistance to the helpless, or from spending
handfuls for the suffering; to see if her taste for the arts was no
longer to be gratified with pictures, paintings, statues, cameos,
and other objects of vertu, which filled her with so much joy and
admiration; if her elegant manners and fondness for finery and dress
were to be denied all that was costly, all that was fashionable, and
which seemed to have been expressly invented for the adorning of an
empress. And when, in some of those grave, melancholy hours of internal
anxiety, the cruel phantoms of the future reckonings arose before her
and warned her to stop purchasing, Josephine comforted herself with the
idea that it was Napoleon himself who had requested her to be to all the
ladies of his court a pattern of elegance, and to be distinguished above
all by the most brilliant, the choicest, the costliest toilet.
The emperor would often come into the cabinet of the empress, and to the
great astonishment of her ladies-in-waiting would enter into the most
minute details of her dress, and designate the robes and ornaments which
he desired her to wear on some special festivity. It even happened in
Aix-la-Chapelle that Napoleon, who had come into the toilet-room of the
empress and found that she had put on a robe which did not please him,
poured ink on the costly dress of silver brocade, so as to compel her
to put on another. [Footnote: Avrillon, “Memoires,” vol. i., p. 98; and
Constant, “Memoires,” vol. iii., p. 103.]
And then how was it possible to resist the temptation of purchasing
all those beautiful things which were constantly brought to her for
inspection? Josephine loved what was beautiful, tasteful, and artistic;
all works of art which she admired must be purchased, whatever price was
asked; and when the merchants came to offer to the empress their superb
and splendid articles of luxury, how could she have the cruel courage
to repel them? How often did she purchase objects of extraordinary value
for which she had no need, simply to please herself and the merchant!
Every thing that was beautiful and tasteful pleased her, and she must
possess it. No one had a more remarkably fine taste than Josephine, but
the artists, the manufacturers, the merchants, also had fine taste,
and they came to the empress with the best they had; it was therefore
natural that she should purchase from them But unfortunately the happy
moment of the purchase was followed by the unhappy one of the payment,
and the outlay was constantly beyond the income of the empress, whose
treasury, besides, was so often emptied in charities, pensions, and
presents. Then when the merchants urged payment, and the purse was
empty, Josephine had recourse to the emperor, and had to entreat him to
meet her expenses, and then came violent scenes, reproaches, and
bitter words. The emperor was angry, Josephine wept, and payment and
reconciliation followed these scenes. Josephine promised to the emperor
and to herself to be more economical in the future, and no longer to
purchase what she could not pay for, but ever came the temptation, with
all its inviting treasures, and being no saintly Anthony, she would fall
a prey to the temptation.
The third and thickest cloud which often darkened the serene sky of
her happiness after her marriage was, as already said, Josephine’s
childlessness. This was the bitter drop which was mixed in the golden
cup of her joy--this was the sting which, however deeply hid under the
roses, still reached her heart and wounded it painfully. She had no
children who could call Napoleon father, no offspring to prolong the
future of the new dynasty. And therefore the firmer the emperor’s
power became, the higher he stood above all other princes, the more
distressing and the more anxious were the emotions which filled the
heart of Josephine, the louder was the warning voice which ceased not to
whisper to her heart, and which she forgot only now and then under the
glow of Napoleon’s assurances of love, or amid the noise of festivities.
This voice whispered: “You must give place to another. Napoleon will
reject you, to marry a wife of princely birth, who will give an heir to
his empire!”
How Josephine strove to silence these agonizing whisperings of her
heart! With what restlessness of sorrow she rushed into the gayeties and
amusements of a court life! How she sought, in charitable occupations,
in the joys of society, in every thing which was congruous to the life
of a woman, of an empress, to obtain the forgetfulness of her torments!
With what envious attention she listened to the whispers of courtiers,
scrutinized their features, read their looks, to find out if they still
believed in the existence of an empress in the wife of Napoleon! With
what jealous solicitude she observed all the families on European
thrones, and considered what princesses among them were marriageable,
and whether Napoleon’s relations with the fathers of such princesses
were more intimate than those with the other princes!
And then she ever sought to deafen this vigilant, warning voice, by
comforting herself with the thought that the emperor had adopted his
brother’s son, the son of Hortense, and that he had made him his heir,
and consequently the throne and the dynasty were secure in a successor.
But alas! Fate would not leave this last comfort to the unfortunate
empress. In May of the year 1807, Prince Napoleon, the crown prince
of Holland, Napoleon’s adopted son and successor, died of a child’s
disease, which in a few days tore him away from the arms of his
despairing mother.
Josephine’s anguish was boundless, and in the first hours of this
misfortune, which with such annihilating force fell upon her, the
empress, as if in a state of hallucination, gazed into the future,
and, with prophetic voice, exclaimed: “Now I am lost! Now is divorce
certain!”
Yes, she was lost! She felt it, she knew it! Nothing the emperor did
to pacify her anguish--the numerous expressions of his love, of his
sympathy, of his winning affection--nothing could any longer deceive
Josephine. The voices which had so long whispered in her breast now
cried aloud: “You must give place to another! Napoleon will reject you,
so as to have a son!”
But the emperor seemed still to try to dispel these fears, and, to give
to his Josephine a new proof of his love and faithfulness, he chose
Eugene de Beauharnais, the son of Josephine, for his adopted heir, and
named him Vice-King of Italy, and gave him in marriage the daughter of
the King of Bavaria; he thus afforded to Europe the proof that he still
considered Josephine as his wife, and that he desired to be shown to
her all the respect due to her dignity, for he travelled to Munich in
company with her in order to be present at the nuptials.
This journey to attend her son’s marriage was the last pleasure of
Josephine--her last days of honors and happiness. Once more she saw
herself surrounded by all the splendor and the pomp of her rank; once
more she was publicly honored and admired as the wife of the first and
greatest ruler of the world, the wife of the Emperor Napoleon.
Perhaps Josephine, in these hours of happiness, when as empress, wife,
and mother, she enjoyed the purest and most sacred pleasure, forgot the
sad forebodings and fears of her soul. Perhaps she now believed that,
since Napoleon had adopted her Eugene as his son, and had given to this
son a wife of royal extraction, Fate would be propitious to her; that
the emperor would be satisfied with the son of his choice, and that the
future scions of the royal princess would be the heirs of his throne.
But one word of Napoleon frightened her out of this ephemeral security
into which happiness had lulled her.
Josephine wept as she bade farewell to her son; she was comfortless when
with his young wife Eugene left for Italy. She complained to Napoleon,
in justification of her tears, that she should seldom see her son, that
now he was lost to his mother’s heart.
The emperor, who at first had endeavored to comfort her felt at last
wounded by her sorrow.
“You weep, Josephine,” said he, hastily, “but you have no reasonable
motives to do so; you weep simply because you are separated from your
son. If already the absence of your children causes you so much sorrow,
think then what I must endure! The tenderness which you feel for your
children makes me cruelly experience how unhappy it is for me to have
none.” [Footnote: Avrillon, “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol.
i., p. 202.]
Josephine trembled, and her tears ceased flowing in the presence of the
emperor, but only to fall more abundantly as soon as he had left her.
Now she wept no longer at her separation from her son; her tears were
still more bitter and painful--she grieved over the coming future; she
wept because those voices which happiness for a moment had deafened, now
spoke more loudly--more fearfully and menacingly shouted: “Napoleon will
reject you! He will choose for himself a wife of royal birth, who will
give an heir to his throne and his empire.”