The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0006/00064.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00064}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter VIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{josephine
emperor
empress
divorce
napoleon
france
children
eugene
napoleon's
now}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Josephine
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter VIII

Napoleon Returns To France - Josephine's Unhappiness - Napoleon's View Of A
Divorce - The Way In Which The Divorce Was Effected

     Unhappily for the Empress, her reunion with Napoleon was marred by a
delay which irritated the Emperor no little.  Josephine was at St. Cloud when
she received a note, about October 24th or 25th, from Napoleon, saying he
would be at Fontainebleau on the 26th or 27th, and that she had better go
there with her suite.  A later courier set the evening of the 27th as the time
of his arrival.  What was Josephine's terror on having a messenger ride
rapidly in from Fontainebleau on the afternoon of the 26th, saying the Emperor
had arrived that morning and there had been no one but the concierge to meet
him!  It could not be denied that such a reception was a poor one for a
conquering Emperor who now for the first time in six months set foot in his
kingdom.  Josephine feared, with reason, that Napoleon would be irritated, and
now of all times when she needed so much to please him!

     Post haste she drove to Fontainebleau.  The Emperor did not come to meet
her, and she was forced to mount to his library, where his scant welcome
chilled her to the heart.  He meant to announce the divorce then. She soon
found, however, that it was the Emperor's resentment at what he considered her
fault in failing to meet him that caused his coldness.  A trembling
explanation, a few tears, and he was appeased, and they passed a happy
evening.

     Napoleon had taken quite another means, and a most disquieting one, to
hint to Josephine that the divorce was under consideration.  The apartments of
the Emperor and Empress at Fontainebleau, as at other places, were connected
by a private staircase.  When Josephine looked about her suite, which had been
newly decorated, she discovered that this passage had been sealed up.  In
consternation, she sought a friend of hers in Napoleon's household, and asked
why this had been done, by whose orders.  She could get no satisfaction,
nothing but evasive answers, halting explanations.  Alarmed, yet fearing to
approach the Emperor, she showed a troubled face and tear-stained eyes.  Now,
nothing ever had disturbed Napoleon more than to see Josephine in sorrow.  The
sight, and the knowledge of the cause, unnerved him now.  He took a course
characteristic of an autocratic man, accustomed to implicit obedience from
associates, when he has determined to force some one he loves to do a
distasteful act; he avoided Josephine's presence, scarcely ever exchanged a
word with her that the etiquette of the court did not require, rarely met her
gaze.  The Empress felt that his coldness could mean but one thing.  She soon
began to hear whispers of the decision in the court, for the Emperor had made
his resolution known to several persons, and the necessary preparations were
already making.  Josephine could not but see, at the same time, that her
enemies - the Bonaparte family and their allies - and those about her who were
mere time-servers had changed materially in their attitude toward her.  There
was more than one lord or lady who did not hesitate to neglect, even slight,
the Empress.  She was a person whom it was no longer necessary to cultivate;
and, besides, might not the Emperor take it as a compliment to his judgment to
see that she whom he was to discard was ignored by his followers?

     Josephine's uncertainty as to precisely what the divorce meant made her
alarm the greater.  She undoubtedly saw in it at this time nothing but a
disgrace and a punishment.  She was to be cast out - her honors stripped from
her, her friends driven away, her luxury at an end.  Not only must she be
separated from the Emperor, whom she loved and to whose happiness and success
she believed superstitiously that she was necessary; but no doubt she would be
driven from France.  She saw herself in exile, poor, friendless, alone, - she
who had been the Empress of France, the consort of Napoleon.  And her
children: her downfall meant theirs.  Hortense, whose happiness had been
wrecked by her marriage, what now would become of her?  And Eugene, whom the
Emperor had so loved and trusted and honored, what of him?

     But Josephine's idea of the divorce as a disgrace and punishment was not
Napoleon's.  That he had never explained to her what he meant, was due to his
own cowardice.  In 1807, he had succumbed entirely, when the subject came up,
and put the thought aside.  Now he clung to his decision, but lacked courage
to break it to her.  He feigned irritation and coldness to hide his own
faint-heartedness.

     As a matter of fact, Napoleon regarded the divorce as a great state
affair.  To perpetuate France's peace, stability, glory, an heir was
necessary; therefore he and Josephine who loved each other parted.  They
suffered that France might live.  The divorce then, was to be regarded as a
sacrificial rite, and Josephine was to be placed before the country as a noble
victim to whom the greatest honor then and ever should be shown. Such was
Napoleon's idea, and quietly, in this month after his return from Schonbrunn,
he was preparing a ceremony which would put the affair in this light to the
country.  It was for this reason he summoned all the members of the Bonaparte
and Beauharnais families from far and near; that he gathered in France all
that was great in the Empire and among his allies; that he made Fontainebleau
a veritable court of kings.  To poor Josephine all of this looked like a cruel
device to parade her grief and dishonor.

     About the middle of November, the court came to Paris; but still the
Emperor delayed, he could not say the word.  The constraint between the two
became constantly greater; the suffering of both, it was evidence to all their
intimate friends, was increasing.  At last, on November 30th, after a silent
and wretched dinner, Napoleon led Josephine into a salon, dismissed their
followers, and told her of his decision.  Josephine grasping nothing in his
broken words but that they were to be separated, burst into tears, and fell
upon a couch, where she lay sobbing aloud.  She was carried to her apartment,
where her attendants vainly sought to check her wild grief.  Nor was her calm
restored until late in the evening, when Hortense came to her with an
explanation of the situation, which seems to have been entirely new to her
mind.  The Emperor, overwhelmed by Josephine's outburst, had strengthened his
own mind by summoning immediately to his side certain advisors who favored the
divorce.  After talking with them, he had sent for Hortense, and begun rather
brutally by telling her that tears would do no good, that he had made up his
mind that the divorce was necessary to the safety of the Empire, and that she
and her mother must accept it as inevitable.  Hortense replied with dignity
that the Empress, whatever her grief, would obey his will, and that she and
Eugene would follow her into exile; that none of them would complain at their
disgrace, that all would remember his past kindness.  This seems to have been
Napoleon's first glimmer of the idea of the divorce which the Beauharnais
entertained.  He began to weep.  "What!" he cried, "do you and Eugene mean to
desert me?  You must not do it, you must stay with me. Your position, the
future of your children, require it.  However cruel the divorce for both your
mother and me, it must be consummated with the dignity which the circumstances
require." Everything which could be done to soften the situation for Josephine
should be done, he said.  She should remain the first in rank after the
Empress on the throne