PREMONITIONS.
Josephine's fears, and the prophecies of the French clairvoyante, were
now about to be fulfilled. The crown which Josephine had reluctantly and
sorrowfully accepted, and which she had afterward worn with so much
grace and amiability, with such natural majesty and dignity, was about
to fall from her head. Napoleon had the cruel courage, now that the
dreamed-of future had been realized, to put away from him the woman who
had loved him and chosen him when he had nothing to offer her but his
hopes for the future. Josephine, who, with smiling courage and brave
fidelity, had stood at his side in the times of want and humiliation,
was now to be banished from his side into the isolation of a glittering
widowhood. Napoleon had the courage to determine that this should be
done, but he lacked the courage to break it to Josephine, and to
pronounce the word of separation himself. He was determined to sacrifice
to his ambition the woman he had so long called his "good angel;" and
he, who had never trembled in battle, trembled at the thought of her
tears, and avoided meeting her sad, entreating gaze.
But Josephine divined the whole terrible misfortune that hung
threateningly over her head. She read it in the gloomy, averted
countenance of the emperor, who, since his recent return from Vienna,
had caused the door that connected his room with that of his wife to be
locked; she read it in the faces of the courtiers, who dared to address
her with less reverence, but with a touch of compassionate sympathy; she
heard it in the low whispering that ceased when she approached a group
of persons in her parlors; it was betrayed to her in the covert,
mysterious insinuations of the public press, which attached a deep and
comprehensive significance to the emperor's journey to Vienna.
She knew that her destiny must now be fulfilled, and that she was too
weak to offer any resistance. But she was determined to act her part as
wife and empress worthily to the end. Her tears should not flow
outwardly, but inwardly to her grief-stricken heart; she suppressed her
sighs with a smile, and concealed the pallor of her cheeks with rouge.
But she longed for a heart to whom she could confide her anguish, and
show her tears, and therefore called her daughter to her side.
How painful was this reunion of mother and daughter, how many tears were
shed, how bitter were the lamentations Josephine whispered in her
daughter's ear!
"If you knew," said she, "in what torments I have passed the last few
weeks, in which I was no longer his wife, although compelled to appear
before the world as such! What glances, Hortense, what glances courtiers
fasten upon a discarded woman! In what uncertainty, what expectancy more
cruel than death, have I lived and am I still living, awaiting the
lightning stroke that has long glowed in Napoleon's eyes[15]!"
[Footnote 15: Josephine's own words.--Bourrienne, vol. viii., p. 243.]
Hortense listened to her mother's lamentations with a heart full of
bitterness. She thought of how she had been compelled to sacrifice her
own happiness to that of her mother, of how she had been condemned to a
union without love, in order that the happiness of her mother's union
might be established on a firm basis. And now all had been in vain; the
sacrifice had not sufficed to arrest the tide of misfortune now about to
bear down her unhappy mother. Hortense could do nothing to avert it. She
was a queen, and yet only a weak, pitiable woman, who envied the beggar
on the street her freedom and her humble lot. Both mother and daughter
stood on the summit of earthly magnificence, and yet this empress and
this queen felt themselves so poor and miserable, that they looked back
with envy at the days of the revolution--the days in which they had led
in retirement a life of poverty and want. Then, though struggling with
want and care, they had been rich in hopes, in wishes, in illusions;
now, they possessed all that could adorn life; now millions of men bowed
down to them, and saluted them with the proud word "majesty," and yet
empress and queen were now poor in hopes and wishes, poor in the
illusions that lay shattered at their feet, and rejoicing only in the
one happiness, that of being able to confide their misery to each other.
A few days after her arrival, the emperor caused Hortense to be called
to his cabinet. He advanced toward her with vivacity, but before the
gaze of her large eyes the glance of the man before whom the whole world
now bowed, almost quailed.
"Hortense," said he, "we are now called on to decide an important
matter, and it is our duty not to recoil. The nation has done so much
for me and my family, that I owe them the sacrifice which they demand of
me. The tranquillity and welfare of France require that I shall choose a
wife who can give the country an heir to the throne. Josephine has been
living in suspense and anguish for six months, and this must end. You,
Hortense, are her dearest friend and her confidante; she loves you more
than all else in the world. Will you undertake to prepare your mother
for this step? You would thereby relieve my heart of a heavy burden."
Hortense had the strength to suppress her tears, and fasten her eyes on
the emperor's countenance in a firm, determined gaze. His glance again
quailed, as the lion recoils from the angry glance of a pure, innocent
woman. Hortense had the courage to positively refuse the
emperors request.
"How, Hortense!" exclaimed Napoleon with emotion. "You then refuse my
request?"
"Sire," said she, hardly able longer to restrain her tears, "sire, I
have not the strength to stab my mother to the heart[16]."
[Footnote 16: Schelten, vol. ii., p. 45.]
And regardless of etiquette, Hortense turned away and left the emperor's
cabinet, the tears pouring in streams from her eyes.